A 



* THE 
YOUNG 
FOLKS' ^ 
BOOK *£ 



IDEALS 







THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 




"THE SPLENDOUR PALLS 
ON CASTLE WALLS." 



THE YOUNG FOLKS 
BOOK OF IDEALS 

BY 
WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE. BY 

ALICE BARBER STEPHENS 

AND THIRTY-TWO PHOTOGRAPHIC 

ILLUSTRATIONS 




LOTHROP, LEE AND SHEPAKD CO. 
BOSTON 



Published, November, 1916 



&fr 



Copyright, 1916, 
By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 



All Rights Reserved. 



YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 



y£* 



NOV i0i9l6 

IRorwooo press 

BERWICK & SMITH CO. 

NORWOOD, MASS. 
C. S. A. 



©CI.A446303 



WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT 

During the many years that I have been reading books 
for young people I have been saying to myself : Some day 
I will write a young people's book. And this is the kind of 
book it shall be : 

It shall be about things worth while. 

It shall be cheerful. 

I will write as if the one I were talking to would run away 
if I did not hold his attention. 

I will not put in a paragraph that would have bored me 
when I was younger. 

I will not talk down to anybody. 

I will try to make the big things important. 

I will remember that young people are sure of one fact, 
that life is good; and interested in one purpose to make 
good. 

I will try to explain some of the difficulties and problems 
that young folks of high-school age have to face. 

I will be practical : I will tell very few stories about mil- 
lionaires or statesmen or people long dead, whom it is hard 
to imitate. 

I will be useful : I will put into nearly every chapter some 
project that my readers can carry out. 

Young folks have made me very happy : in my own home ; 
in clubs and camps; in schools and churches. So I owe 
them my best. 

And here it is. 

William Byron Forbush. 

Dreamolden. 

3 



CONTENTS 

BOOK I 
THE STURDY BODY 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Great Old Game of Life 15 

Showing How the Spirit of Play Helps Us to be Strong 

II "The Splendour* Falls" 21 

Morning Hearts and Morning Faces 

III Fighting Trim 27 

No Slackers Wanted 

IV Three Factors of Perfect Health .... 37 

Sleep; Vitality; Physical Ideals 

V Get into the Game 45 

Out of the Bleachers and Out on the Field 

VI Training Tells 49 

Stories of Weaklings who became Strong 

VII Breaking Training 56 

How Great Games are Lost 

VIII What Great Athletes Say 60 

About What to Do 

IX What Great Athletes Say 72 

About What to Avoid 

X Sportsmanlikeness 80 

Stories about Fair Play 

XI The Open Road 91 

'The Striding Heart from Hill to Hill" 

XII Wood-Smoke at Twilight 101 

The Joys of Camping Out 

XIII Keeping Clean in 

Several Good Sorts 
5 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV How to Grow Beautiful 120 

Of Special Interest to Girls, of Course 

XV The Value of Doing Things Badly . . . .133 
Where it Pays to Be a Duffer 

XVI Do What You are Afraid to 137 

When "We're on our Five- Yard Line" 

XVII The Glory of Self-Mastery 143 

Be a Self-Starter 



BOOK II 

THE ALERT MIND 

XVIII The Fellowship of Spring 153 

How the Mind of Youth Awakens 

XIX All Alive 159 

How Big is Your Map? 
XX "There's No Clock in the Forest" .... 166 
Enchanted Saunterers 

XXI Tide-Marks 181 

Move out of Podunk unto Persia 

XXII Big-Brotherhood 188 

How Great Men Have Encouraged the Young 

XXIII How to Talk Well 193 

The Game of Conversation from Kick-off to Goal 

XXIV Home Study 199 

Some Methods and Results 

XXV The Enjoyment of Reading 204 

How to be the Companion of Nobles 

XXVI Books You are Bound to Enjoy 211 

Some of the Best Books Described 

XXVII Heather Honey 226 

What Self-Education Can Do 

XXVIII "I Didn't Have Any Folks" 231 

Conquering Heredity 

XXIX "I Didn't Have Any Chance" 236 

Conquering Environment 



CONTENTS 7 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXX The Conquest of Drudgery 243 

Do it with Some Big Motive 

XXXI A Ditch or a Breastwork ? 247 

On Being a Jitney 

XXXII Seeing What Underlies 253 

The Secret of Liking One's Job 

XXXIII Fighting a Little of the Dog at a Time . . 259 

Even if You Can't See the End, Begin 

XXXIV What Sand Can Do 265 

How to Discourage the Devil 

XXXV Work, Not Shirk . . . 270 

What's What, Not Who's Who 

XXXVI How Boys Are Making Good 274 

XXXVII How Girls Are Making Good 284 

XXXVIII Looking Ahead 292 

Studying in the Line of One's Future 

XXXIX The Practice That Makes Perfect .... 305 
One is Never too Old to Practise 

XL Making Up Your Time-table 309 

Don't Get Cluttered 

XLI Studying Yourself 316 

How to Find Out What You are Good For 

XLII Studying the Vocations 324 

How to Find Out What is Good for You 

XLIII Does the Higher Education Pay? .... 335 
What College Can Do, and Who Should Go 

XLIV The Value of Training , . 346 

In Money and Satisfaction 

XLV The Joy of Saving Money ....... 352 

A Little Handbook of Getting Ahead 

XLVI How Others Decided 367 

Stories of Life-Decisions 

XLVII The Final Choice of a Calling 372 

A Review of the Best Considerations 



8 



CONTENTS 



BOOK III 
GOOD FELLOWSHIP 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XLVIII The Torch-Bearers 381 

An Unpayable Debt; Our Challenging Opportunity 

XLIX "The Gang" 395 

The Friendship-Making Days of Life 

L The Education of Princes 400 

Knights of To-day 

LI A Star for Your Wagon 405 

The Emulation that Lifts 

LII The Cheer-Master 411 

Geniuses by Proxy 
LIII The Happy Way of Doing Things .... 421 
The Golden Keys of Courtesy 

LIV Great-Heart, Guide to Pilgrims 425 

Big in Little Things 

LV Tilters at Windmills 430 

Make Every Knock a Boost 
LVI "Not Fixed to Entertain Strangers" .... 435 

The Noble Art of Bridge-Building 
LVII The Sad Adventures of Susie Damn . . . 442 
Being Good Friends with One's Family 

LVIII For Fathers and Sons 449 

And Mothers and Daughters 
LIX The Part You Will Play in School .... 455 

What Came to Stover at Yale 
LX An Efficiency Chart of Amusements . . . 462 
How to Get Above Cheap Fun 

LXI The Possessor of the Password 466 

The Kind of Boy Girls Like 

LXII The Pinnacle of Girlhood 469 

The Kind of Girl Boys Like 

LXIII Two Hearts That Beat as One 475 

What Constitutes a Beautiful Marriage 

LXIV A Good Turn Daily 482 

Goodness That Makes Good 



CONTENTS 9 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LXV The Larger Patriotism 491 

New Fields for the Patriot 

LXVI World Brotherhood 497 

The Greatest Crusade of the Century 



BOOK IV 

THE AWAKENED SELF 

LXVII Seventeen 505 

The Glory of Being a Person 

LXVIII Strength and Splendour 511 

Failures Half-Divine 

LXIX The Secrets of Cheerfulness 521 

Gloom-Cures 

LXX The Contented Great 530 

On Heartsease 
LXXI The Man Who Sings at His Work .... 539 
Living in High Spirits 

LXXII Don't Whimper 545 

Listen to the Lark, not the Rat 

LXXIII Things That Spoil Well 549 

Doing Work to a Finish 

LXXIV Minding One's Own Business 559 

"Why Doesn't Somebody Fix That?" 
LXXV Your Young Brother and Your Grown-up Son 565 
The Man We are Making 

LXXVI The Most Important of All 571 

Backgrounds for Success 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

" The Splendour Falls 
On Castle Walls," 

from a Painting by Alice Barber Stephens .... Frontispiece S 

FACING 

PAGE 

One of the Games that Make Manhood 28 " 

In Fighting Trim 32 ' 

" The Colonel " 50 ' 

" Each Individual Crouched, Touched Hands, and Swung 

into His Place'' 56^ 

" Three Strikes and Out " 70 " 

Why Dartmouth Is a Fine Winter College 92 v 

Have You Smelt Wood-Smoke at Twilight? .... 102" 

The First Recipe for Beauty is Health 120^ 

" They're on our Five- Yard Line " I38 / 

Thomas A. Edison, the Man Who Never Wants to Know 

the Time 166 "' 

An Enchanted Saunterer : John Burroughs .... 170^ 

Art Appeals to Women 222^ 

A Boys' Club at Work on a Project under Supervision of 

our Government . 282 ' 

Mothercraft : the New and Eternally Old Vocation . . . 290 * 

Men Who Got Ready 302^ 

In Choosing a Vocation, Consider Whether You are a Man 

Who Wants Adventure 316^ 

One of the New Occupations: Inside a Motion-Picture 

Studio 326 

Girls at Barnard College Studying to Be Landscape-Gar- 
deners and Florists 330' 

Analytical Chemistry, a Vocation that is Beckoning to Girls 336^ 
The Trade-School Apprentice Has a Better Chance than 

the Jack-at-all-trades 348^ 

11 



v 



12 ILLUSTRATIONS 

PACING 
PAGE 

How to Save a Dollar 362 y 

In the Service of Holy Church 388" 

" For Sweet Mercy's Sake " 392 y 

Girls Enjoy Dramatics 396 y 

An Off Hour for Fellowship in a College Student's Room 398^ 
" The Man Who Has a Travelling Mind," Woodrow Wil- 
son 408 

The Cheer-Master - 412' 

A Young Coast-Guardsman Nursing the Boy Whom He 

Saved 416' 

The First Student to Register in One of the Great New 

High Schools in New York City 456 / 

The Fighting Part of Patriotism Has Always Been Done 

by Young Men 492/ 

Old Glory 496"' 

Where a Social Worker Finds Her Task 562^ 



BOOK I 

THE STURDY BODY 

" Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of 
emperors ridiculous." 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



The plan of this division of the book is as follows: 

Chapters I-IV are about Health. 

Chapters V-XII are about Play. 

Chapters XIII-XVII are about the Qualities that grow out of Health- 
ful Living and Fair Play. 



THE YOUNG FOLKS 5 BOOK 
OF IDEALS 



THE GREAT OLD GAME OF LIFE 

IT was the morning of the annual field day at Lawrence- 
ville Academy. Along the slender line of cinder track 
a thousand spectators had gathered. The whole school was 
leaning over the guard ropes. Fathers, mothers, sisters, 
sweethearts were mixed among them. The last event had 
come, the 220-yard hurdles. 

If there is in all the realm of sport a prettier event than 
this I have yet to see it. The 100-yard dash of course is 
one thrilling breath of excitement. The pole vault gives 
one some moments of restless flurry. But in the hurdles 
there is not only the swift dash, the suspense when the run- 
ners break from the barriers and breast the tape, but there 
is the birdlike rise, the well-planned stride from fence to 
fence, intelligence added to swiftness, the skill and light- 
ness of the human deerhound. It takes discipline, judg- 
ment, unwearying practice as well as natural speed to run 
the hurdles. Brains, legs and a good heart are required. 

Frank Hapgood had already made a third in the high 
jump, a second in the hundred and had taken his share in 
the relay — an unusual record — when I saw him lifting 
his knees high in a practice trot to warm up for the hurdles. 

is 



16 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

And when for three heats the white running suit with the 
lavender ribbon shot past me ahead of them all and that 
flushed face, glad with struggle and victory, beamed mod- 
estly before the judges who awarded the ribbons, I was 
one of the first to clap him on the back and tell him he had 
done credit to our old school. For a new hurdle record 
would be printed in gold now on the great oak shield that 
hangs over the fireplace in the Commons. 

It was an hour before I could get away with him from 
his friends, while he was shedding his track suit and getting 
into citizens' clothes in his room. As I watched his muscles 
ripple with every bend of his body and saw how flexible 
he was though so firm, I breathed a sigh of envy, while I 
cried out : " Frank, it's great to be as strong as you are ! 
Tell me how you do it." 

Frank executed a giant swing with his right arm that 
brought a black Oxford within his reach, threw it to the 
ceiling and caught it in his left hand behind his back, while 
he grinned : " Oh, I guess it's play that does it, that's all." 

" But don't you do calisthenics, and that sort of thing? " 

" Never did a i cal ' in my life. Don't know how to pro- 
nounce the word and can't spell it and never did like the 
sound of it. I don't believe any schoolboy who has done 
anything in athletics ever got ahead much by what they call 
' exercise.' If I tried to get strong because I thought it 
was a duty I'd have been a dead one long ago. You've 
just got to love it to be it." 

How often I have thought of that phrase of Frank's: 
" You've just got to love it to be it." I found that Frank 
got most of his athletic training in outdoor and indoor 
games, and when he heard of something that was good to 
do that wasn't a game he invented a game out of it. 



THE GREAT OLD GAME OF LIFE 17 

" You can't get anywhere on ' don'ts,' " added Frank 
sententiously. " All you want is a few simple things that 
you can do. If you don't catch what I mean, read what 
is over on that door." 

I walked over and found a placard giving the following 

"RULES FOR SLEEP." 

Don't sleep on your left side because it causes too great 
a pressure on the heart. 

Don't sleep on the right side because it interferes with 
the respiration of the lung. 

Don't sleep on your stomach for that interferes with 
the respiration of both lungs and makes breathing difficult. 

Don't sleep on your back for that method of getting rest 
is bad for the nervous system. 

Don't sleep sitting in a chair for your body falls into an 
unnatural position, and you cannot get the necessary re- 
laxation. 

Don't sleep standing up for you may fall and crack your 
skull. 

DON'T SLEEP. 

After we had laughed over this together I said : " This 
reminds me of the anxious-looking man that I read about 
the other day who was once trying to pass an examination 
for life insurance. ' You don't dissipate, do you? ' inquired 
the physician as he listened at his lungs. ' Not a fast liver, 
or anything of that sort? ' The little man hesitated a mo- 
ment, looked a bit frightened, and then replied in a thin, 
piping voice : ' I sometimes chew a little gum.' " As 
Frank smiled, I suddenly bethought myself to ask : " Do 
you smoke, Frank ? " 



18 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Do I smoke ? Say, uncle, do I look like a fool ? " 

" Then it isn't true/' I added musingly. 

"What isn't true?" 

" That ' ad ' I read in the subway the other day. It said : 
' Who was it smoked Black Cap cigarettes and broke the 
mile record at college ? ' " 

" That made you tired, too, did it ? It's a shame to let 
such stuff be printed. Some little shrimp of about ten 
might come along and read that and start in to kill potato 
bugs with his breath under the notion that he was getting 
strong enough to enter the ioo-yard dash. When I think 
about those * coffin nails ' I often remember what I read 
once about a brass monkey that was fitted inside with some 
works by a cigar-store man, so that when it was placed in 
the shop window it would puff cigarettes. After a while 
it got out of order, and the inside was found to be clogged 
up with tobacco. A bright boy said he guessed he didn't 
want to put anything inside himself that could stop the 
works of a brass monkey." 

" Pretty good ! " said I, " but you were going to tell me 
how you won the hurdles to-day in a field of twenty fellows 
just by play." 

" So I was. Well, it happened this way. I didn't go 
in for athletics till a year after I came here. I was lazy, 
fond of reading, liked to sit around in the boys' rooms and 
chat, and took my exercise sitting on an umbrella in the 
bleachers and rooting for the team. What woke me up was 
Coach Fellows, who left here last year for Yale. He broke 
into my room one day when I was shaving, felt of my 
biceps, told me I was all kinds of a fool, and asked me 
why I didn't learn how to do embroidery so I could im- 
prove my time while I was watching the football games. 



THE GREAT OLD GAME OF LIFE 19 

After he had got me properly mad he went on to say that 
the squad was small and light that fall and that the trouble 
was that most of us hadn't any school spirit, but that the 
particular trouble with me was that I hadn't any more fun 
in me than my old grandfather. And he went stumbling 
around my room leaning on my broom for a crutch, until 
he had got me into good humor again. Then he talked 
to me like a Dutch uncle, and this was about what he said : 
' If you ever want to get anything out of life that will pay 
and last, you've got to have some play-interest. All the 
big work in the world is done with the spirit of play. And 
if you don't want to lay up a dreary old age for yourself 
you had better get busy and learn to play now/ He gave 
me a new viewpoint. I saw very clearly that if I went 
out into life in the spirit I was showing in school, it would 
be me for the bleachers as long as I lived, criticizing the 
players and unable to play the game myself. 

" You don't know how hard it was for me to begin," 
Frank continued, leaning back in the window seat. " I was 
as soft as a baby, and breathed like a mush-kettle every time 
I started to run. Of course the coach knew how to harden 
me all right, but I found that I had to do something myself 
in order to even want to be hardened. I had to begin with 
the moment of waking in the morning, for getting up was 
the worst thing I had to do and sometimes it seemed as if 
it would be the last. I made a game of it. I allowed my- 
self ten yawns in bed. Then I ran to the open window and 
played I was yelling * Fire ! ' only that I drew in my breath 
hard instead of letting it out. Then I made believe I was 
the fire-engine. I threw my head back, lifted my chest 
high — like this — forced out the breath, still keeping my 
chest up, and then with my lips closed and the breath all 



20 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

out of my body I started for the ' fire ' by walking rapidly 
across the room as many times as I could without breath- 
ing. Within two months I found that the measurement 
around my shoulders had increased two inches. Then me 
for the cold tub — to put out the ' conflagration,' of course 
— but what do you care about all this ? The point is that 
whenever I read or the coach told me anything that would 
make a physical man of me, I tried to make it into a game, 
and whenever I tired of it I changed it a trifle and made 
it into another game. So, as I said, I don't strictly speak- 
ing take any exercises, but, aside from field work with the 
squad, I play some sort of a solitary game 'most every day. 
It's been a great thing for me, but the best of it is that, 
as the coach says, I have found that life is a great game, 
and I'm keen to get into college, and then out and doing, 
and my idea now is that it's going to be fine sport clear 
up to the very end." 

"Great! Frank," I shouted. "And if I'm any prophet 
there'll be some nice records broken by you, too, before 
you're through." 



n 

" THE SPLENDOUR FALLS " 

I WENT into Alice Barber Stephens's studio while she 
was painting the frontispiece of this book. 

" What do you mean by the title, ' The Splendour 
Falls ' ? " she asked me. 

" What I had in mind," I answered, " was that we would 
have in the foreground two young people, a brother and 
sister perhaps, in the golden days of strength and, beauty, 
standing out as if they were just entering into their future." 

" Is that what the castle means ? " asked Mrs. Stephens. 

" Yes," said I, " for you know that in the olden days 
when a young esquire or lady had outgrown childhood they 
were usually sent to some castle to have further training, the 
lad in knightly exercises and the lass in housewifery and 
gentle ministration. So, as Tennyson said, ' The splendour 
falls on castle walls,' and I wish, Mrs. Stephens, you would 
paint a morning glow on the castle roofs and on the clouds, 
and make the landscape green with early summer. But really 
the splendour falls on the young people too, for they are 
splendid in their youthful vigor." 

" I think I understand," she said softly, " and I am sure 
I shall be in the mood to do just what you wish." 

The mood did come, as she promised, for she has never 
done a lovelier piece of work. And I wish you would look 
at the picture again as you begin this chapter, in which 

21 



22 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

I want to tell of the changes that come to the physical life 
of boys and girls during their high-school days. 

The bodily changes that take place at about the begin- 
ning of the high-school years are so startling that they seem 
almost miraculous. Some of them are amusing, some are 
irritating, some are beautiful. 

Your body shoots up three, four, even five or six inches 
in a single year. Your arms and legs lengthen. It seems 
as if the hands grew big in proportion — in company they 
feel like hams. The feet too — one almost thinks himself 
web- footed. There is a disproportion also between the 
growth of the bones and the muscles, so that you become 
for a time awkward, and since you not only may bump both 
sides of a door when you go through it but shake the floor 
with your mighty tread after you enter, you are thought 
noisy. The voice, with boys, breaks and squeaks, and then 
grows gruff or deep. Since " the skin is now the organ of 
the mind," you find yourself blushing with much readi- 
ness, thus betraying all the concern you feel about this 
unmanageable body of yours. 

The internal changes are more important than the outer 
ones. Your lungs and chest should increase very markedly 
in capacity, especially between fourteen and sixteen. The 
muscles develop in size and strength. The heart may in- 
crease as much as sixty per cent. The temperature rises 
about half a degree. The brain now has attained prac- 
tically its full size. The arteries expand less than the heart, 
so the blood pressure increases, and it is believed that it is 
this high pressure of the blood that gives the new feeling 
of buoyancy and courage, the sense of power and the long- 
ing for freedom that are now felt by all healthy boys and 
girls. The strength however is greater than the endur- 



" THE SPLENDOUR FALLS " 23 

ance and while very few youths — even good ones — die 
young, still a lot of sleep, deep breathing, outdoor exercise, 
eager but not exhausting games and a careful hardening 
process are needed in order to meet the strains that are to 
come. 

THE LOVELY GROWTH OF GIRLS 

It is interesting to note that boys and girls do not de- 
velop along parallel lines. With a twin brother and sister 
of this period the changes that begin in the girl at twelve do 
not appear in the boy for two years later. The boy will 
not overtake the girl in height or weight until fourteen or 
even sixteen. The girl will be more mature in every way, 
in mind as well as in body, for the first year at least in high 
school. This helps to explain why boys and girls of the 
same age who have been playmates tend to draw apart for 
a time, and why girls like boys older than themselves. We 
men must be fair enough to acknowledge that women have 
the advantage of us in the outward appearance of growth, 
for while we are becoming square and stiff they are grow- 
ing rounder and more beautiful. 

There is something very lovely about the way a girl sud- 
denly grows up into womanhood, and folks begin to notice 
it. Perhaps you remember the following description in 
Margaret Deland's " The Iron Woman." 

" Elizabeth's long braids had always been attractive to 
the masculine eye ; they had suggested jokes about pigtails, 
and much of that peculiar humor so pleasing to the young 
male ; but the summer she ' put up her hair ' the puppies, so 
to speak, got their eyes open. When the boys saw those 
long plaits, no longer hanging within easy reach of a rude 
and teasing hand, but folded around her head behind her 



24 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

little ears ; when they saw the small curls breaking over and 
through the brown braids of spun silk, clustering in the 
nape of her neck, something below the artless brutality of 
the boys' sense of humor was touched . . . The significant 
moment came one afternoon when they all went out to the 
tollhouse for ice-cream. As they sat eating their cream 
together, Blair suddenly saw the sunshine sparkle in Eliza- 
beth's hair, and his spoon paused midway to his lips. 

" ' Oh, say, isn't Elizabeth's hair nice ? ' he said. 

" Blair, smiling to himself, put out a hesitating finger 
and touched a shimmering curl; upon which Elizabeth 
ducked and laughed. Blair, watching the lovely color in 
her cheek, said in honest delight, ' When your face gets 
red like that you are awfully good-looking, Elizabeth.' " 

Some poet sang of this transformation in this stanza: 

" An exquisite incompleteness, blossom foreshadowing fruit ; 

A sketch faint in its beauty, with promise of future worth ; 
A plant with some leaves unfolded, and the rest asleep at its root ; 

To deck with their future sweetness the fairest thing on the 
earth." 

WHAT THESE CHANGES MEAN FOR US 

When we say that during these years a boy is growing 
into a man and a girl into a woman one important fact that 
we mean is that the boy and girl are coming to be able to 
take their part in the world alongside of men and women. 
Another important and precious fact that is meant is that, 
during the next ten years, boys and girls are maturing those 
powers which make them capable of becoming parents, and 
so handing down the torch of life to a generation that, in 
time, shall take their places. So these years reach up to 



" THE SPLENDOUR FALLS " 25 

the manhood of the present and down to the childhood of 
the future. 

It has been remarked that the high-school years contain 
some of the happiest and the unhappiest days of life. 
Probably both statements are exaggerated. The reason 
that there is some unhappiness during these years is that 
these enormous bodily changes and these new powers cause 
considerable bodily irritation, which means at times moody 
days, nervous spells, periods of misunderstanding of one's 
self or others, and occasional overstrain and illness. Most 
of this unrest can be overcome or prevented by plenty of 
sleep, avoidance of excess in work or play, sensible physical 
training and pure and wholesome ideals. At this time 
hearty confidences with loving parents, sane athletic leaders 
and, sometimes, wise family physicians will show that most 
that causes concern is natural and temporary. If a boy 
or girl can realize that those who are older have felt these 
same " growing pains " and can explain them, anxieties 
are shown to be needless. 

It is interesting to learn why the extreme happiness comes 
that is so pleasant a part of becoming a man. It is largely 
due to the increased responsiveness of the bodily senses. 
It is claimed by the physiologists that colors are actually 
brighter, sounds and odors sweeter, hungers keener and 
touch-sensations more delightful than they have been be- 
fore. G. Stanley Hall says : " Dress, flowers, clouds and 
sky and all variegated paintings in Nature's art gallery are 
not only perceived more clearly, but are inwardly felt . . . 
The sounds in nature reverberate more deeply in the soul. 
The running brook, the waving trees and grass, the ripple 
of the sea, the song of birds, the noises of the tempest come 



26 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

nearer to the soul and seem to take on a more human quality. 
Now stillness itself may become a sensation." Is it strange 
that, with these increased means of pleasure, you who are 
young should feel that you are living in the golden age, and 
think that we who are older, as a friend of mine says, 
" know very little of the glories of life and of this exceed- 
ingly good world " ? 



Ill 

FIGHTING TRIM 

FIGHTING trim is a term used in the navy for the im- 
mediate readiness of a battle-ship for battle. Applied 
to a boy or girl, it means a condition of health that means 
immediate readiness to fight disease or accident. 

You admire it in a battle-ship because you know it is 
necessary; it may have to fight at any time. Isn't this just 
as true of a boy or a girl? To have some day a hand-to- 
hand encounter with disease is as sure as life itself ; it may 
be that you are already engaged in such a struggle. 

To fight disease is much like righting an enemy at sea. 
One has to study his approach, his armament, his strategy, 
and keep almost sleeplessly alert against a sudden attack. 
And whenever one wishes to engage in any activity or 
amusement that is a foe to health, we should ask as men 
ask in any military campaign, How much injury will this 
success warrant? How much health is this worth? Is 
this pleasure worth a weak lung, a leaky heart, a damaged 
kidney, or a reduced resistance to infection? The answer 
will depend on a sound and broad sense of values. 

I like that soldierly spirit which causes each youth to 
think it as much his patriotic duty to keep his body in fight- 
ing trim as it is for the Secretary of the Navy to keep the 
country's battle-ships in fighting trim. I like the English 
schoolboy's prayer : 

27 



28 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" When from the field of mimic strife, 

Of strength with strength, and speed with speed, 
We face the sterner fights of life; 
As still our strength, in time of need, 
God of our youth, be with us then, 
And make us men, and make us men." 

"NO SLACKERS WANTED" 

Over in England the person who is soft and irresponsi- 
ble is called a " slacker." Three years before the Great 
War broke out the number of such persons, young and 
old, became so great that the leading men of England be- 
came alarmed, and, under the direction of the Earl of 
Meath and some of England's strongest men in civil and 
military life, an organization was formed to combat the 
situation, called " The Duty and Discipline Movement." 
The rather poor part that England played in the early days 
of the war shows that this Movement came none too soon. 

Some of the statements made by a few of these strong 
men and women apply so well to our own land that you 
will be interested in them. One said : " The backbone of 
steel has been removed from our national body, and one of 
putty has been placed in its stead." Sentimentalists, he 
added, have. removed the rod from the schools, and " they 
will not realize that a boy who cannot take a well-deserved 
thrashing without crying out about it is not worth calling 
a boy at all." Another schoolmaster complains because 
translation-books in Latin have taken the place of honest 
work, and he says : " Self-reliance and the grand old spirit 
of dogged determination to conquer hard tasks is done 
away with entirely." 

The Earl of Meath called attention to the fact that the 
English colonies to-day are full of young men " who have 



FIGHTING TRIM 29 

had too easy lives to live at home, who have had too much 
money, too much food. Love of hard work, thrift, self- 
denial, endurance, and indomitable pluck, these are some 
of the hall-marks of an imperial race." And he reminds 
us of Robertson's saying that the real freeman " is not free 
because he does what he likes, but he is free because he 
does what he ought." 

In another essay the same writer accuses the girls of 
England. He says they often " decline to marry unless 
their suitors are in a position to supply them with luxuries 
unheard of by their mothers." He says that " women are 
showing the white feather, and are shirking one of the prin- 
cipal duties of their sex." 

The concern that all these great men and women express 
is lest England shall grow " rabbit-hearted." Upon sturdy 
personal qualities only can the safety and dignity of the 
Empire stand. 

" Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed, 

Vain those all-shattering guns, 
Unless proud England keeps untamed 

The strong heart of her sons." 

OUT-DOOR EDUCATION 

Education in England has always had a lot of sunshine 
on it, and much out-of-doors. This is the way Roger 
Ascham, one of the earliest writers about English school- 
ing, described the education of a gentleman : " To ride 
comely, to run fair at the tilt or ring, to play at all weap- 
ons, to shoot fair in bow, or surely in gun, to vault lustily, 
to run, to leap, to wrestle, to swim, to dance comely, to 
sing, and play of instruments cunningly, to hawk, to hunt, 
to play at tennis, and all pastimes generally, which be joined 



3 o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

with labour, used in open place, and in the daylight, contain- 
ing either some fit exercise for war, or some pleasant pas- 
time for peace, be not only comely and decent, but also 
very necessary, for a courtly gentleman to use." 

" The Greek standard of education," says Norman E. 
Richardson, " required that the boy of seven years and 
older exercise in the Palaestra in five ways : ( i ) Running 
and (2) leaping, to develop the muscles of the legs; (3) 
discus-throwing and (4) javelin-casting, to train the mus- 
cles of the arms and the eyes; (5) wrestling, which exer- 
cised the whole body, and the temper as well. After six- 
teen and until eighteen the youth was admitted to the gym- 
nasia and engaged in the five-fold exercises, running, leap- 
ing, discus-throwing, wrestling and boxing." 

The Spartans regarded as a weakling one who was de- 
voted to soft beds, warm baths, and sweet foods. They 
believed with Henry Thoreau that " A man is rich in pro- 
portion to the number of things that he can let alone." 
They made their currency of iron, so that it would be no 
temptation to carry around and it would be impossible to 
conceal it. One garment served the boys for a whole 
year; they went without shoes, and slept on beds of rushes 
plucked with their own hands. Their food was simple, 
and sometimes they had to go without it. No wonder that 
they were thus described to the Persian king who proposed 
to invade Greece : " They will never accept terms of sur- 
render; and they will join battle with thee, though all the 
rest of Greece should submit to thy will. As for their num- 
bers, they do not ask how many or how few they are, but only 
how bravely they can resist. For though they be freemen, 
they are not in all respects free. Law is the master whom 
they own. Whatever he commands they do, and his com- 



FIGHTING TRIM 31 

mandment is always the same; it forbids them to flee in 
battle, whatever the number of their foes; it requires them 
to stand firm, and to conquer or die." 

Some such spirit appeared in Germany after the Na- 
poleonic wars, when Germany seemed prostrate. Then 
arose Father Jahn and revived calisthenics. We marvel to- 
day that Germans get so much pleasure out of gymnastics, 
without the element of play. The explanation is that the 
Germans have been taught that gymnastics means patri- 
otism, and patriotism is the greatest play there is. 

One can quite sympathize with that Indian tribe many 
years ago who were offered by some white men twelve 
scholarships for twelve selected young braves. They 
looked in the pale faces of the white men and at their stoop- 
ing bodies and replied: "If you will send us twelve of 
your own young men into our woods we will show you 
how youths ought to be educated." 

THE SCOUT PROGRAM: " BE PREPARED " 

We find perhaps our best illustration of the necessity of 
beginning with the trained body in making a prepared man 
in the various exercises encouraged by the Boy Scouts of 
America. 

The tasks required in order to become a Second Class and 
a First Class Scout are even more varied than those de- 
manded in ancient and mediaeval education. The Second 
Class Scout must learn such things as knot-tying, first aid, 
bandaging and signaling. He must be able to track half a 
mile and to go a mile in twelve minutes. These are all in- 
tended to give him the mastery of his hands and to prepare 
him for certain emergencies. He must also cultivate a lik- 
ing for the life of the open, by learning to use a knife 



32 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

hunter-fashion, to build a fire with but two matches, and to 
cook a meal without the usual utensils. The First Class 
Scout has to be able to swim, to use an ax, to make a piece 
of carpentry work, and to do some elementary woodcraft 
observation. The boy who can do these things is not help- 
less when he is away from home or obliged to fend for 
himself. 

Work for the merit badges involves further skill, dex- 
terity, endurance and strength, and gives one a little in- 
sight into various manly occupations. 

The camp, the overnight hike and the annual exhibitions 
carry all these " stunts " to the point of thorough practice 
and efficiency and develop that good-fellowship that is nec- 
essary in a Republic where men are to live together like 
brothers. 

Students of boyhood tell us that we are right if, like the 
Greeks and our own forefathers, we teach boys activities 
that are like those that the human race has followed, and 
if we give them in about the same order. So beginning 
with the simpler things, the ways by which men made 
themselves shelter, kept off starvation and made their 
dwelling-places comfortable, we go on up through the prin- 
cipal trades. This order is in the main followed by the 
Boy Scouts, the conditions for the scout ranks represent- 
ing the earliest activities, and the conditions for the merit 
badges covering many of the trades. 

The scout program suits both the athletic and the un- 
athletic boy. It pleases the former because it keeps him in 
the finest kind of condition ; and it is enjoyable to the latter 
because if he does not care for lively games he is sure to 
find something among the various scout activities, camping, 
nature study, woodcraft, that interests him, and it gives him 



FIGHTING TRIM 33 

enough physical exercise, without exhaustion, to prevent 
his brain overtopping his body. The athletic boy too is 
broadened from playing one kind of game all the time. 
The unathletic boy learns to conquer his tendency to be 
unpractical, hesitating, and soft. To be prepared physically 
adds to both boys important elements in general prepared- 
ness. Of course the boy who makes himself a good morris 
chair is not necessarily equally kind in making his little 
sister a doll-house, and sometimes a lad gets so busy in 
" doing a good turn " through an organization that receives 
pleasant publicity for doing it that he gets no time to do a 
few while he is alone and on his own account. Still if one 
learns to express himself by deeds that are definite and 
patient, if he learns to work and to work with others, if he 
gets a vision of what it means to be a true Scout, he is likely 
to pass on from being merely one who decorates himself 
with " merit badges " to one who appreciates and wins true 
merit. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR GETTING INTO FIGHTING TRIM 

" Into one cup of common sense stir two cups of good health ; add 
slowly the effects of play and exercise beaten up as lightly as pos- 
sible. Stir into this mixture a cup of the milk of human kindness 
and stiffen with four cups of knowledge, not sifted fine. Flavor 
to taste with mischief and bake to a rich brown in the seashore sun. 
Frost with a cup of overalls." 

Frank Hapgood, in our first chapter, speaks with some scorn of 
calisthenic exercises. The athlete who keeps up his play regularly 
all the year round hardly needs them, but the boy or girl who does 
not play regularly finds them useful. I myself know of marvelous 
results in the way of health and vigor that have come from a very 
modest schedule regularly performed. First let me offer some play- 
exercises. 



34 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Furniture Exercises 

It is amusing to put the furniture of the room to gymnastic-play 
uses. The following are suggested in King's " Helps to Health." 

i. Stand squarely on the floor facing the foot-board of the bed. 
With both hands holding it, squat at the same time rising on the 
toes. One may keep his balance, at the same time returning to 
upright position by this help. Do it several times. 

2. Stand back some distance from the side of the bed. Now fall 
forward toward it, placing hands on the edge of the bed. Let the 
body down, pushing the feet back far enough to allow the rigid 
body to rest on the toes and arms, the chest almost touching the bed. 
Push back to arm's length and repeat. 

3. Lift a small chair with both hands by its back, its seating 
pointing out from the body in front. Hold it directly overhead. 
Now let it down, on the right side, then on the left. Then lift it 
from the right side clear over to the left. Repeat. 

4. Lift the chair till it is horizontal, then swing it to the right 
and to the left till the arm muscles are a little tired. 

5. Put two stout, straight-backed chairs almost back to back. 
Stand between them with both hands on the chair backs. Lift the 
feet from the floor, bend the legs at the knees, lower the body by 
the arms, and raise the body with the arm muscles up to upright 
position. 

6. Chin, the frame of the transom. 

7. Lie on the back, grasp a chair as before and push it up from 
the chest and return it till the elbows rest at the side. Afterward, 
let it down gently over and back of the head, and return it to the 
vertical. Do these alternately. 

Systematic Morning Exercises 

A number of systems have been suggested by which, with ten 
minutes' regular exercise each morning upon rising, one may put 
himself into trim for the day, and always keep in condition. 

The essentials in them all are these: 

1. They should be all-round exercises, intended for complete 
body-development, and not merely for the muscles of the arms or of 
the legs. They should promote the functions of the skin, the action 



FIGHTING TRIM 35 

of the lungs and the digestion, and if they specialize anywhere, 
should strengthen the muscles of the abdomen. 

George W. Orton, who six times won the mile championship of 
the United States and of Canada, says : " It is all very well to 
have a fine pair of legs, but without a good body above them they 
will not amount to much. I do not mean by a ' good body ' that 
it is necessary to have a Sandow show of muscles on back and 
abdomen. But it is necessary to have strength in the body, espe- 
cially in the back and abdominal regions. Especial attention should 
be paid to exercises that will develop the heart and lungs. It is 
most important that the body should be strong and wiry, and I lay 
especial emphasis upon this because so many scholastic track 
athletes neglect their bodies and then wonder why they do not 
improve. In all the field events the body is just as important as 
the legs." 

2. They should be simple and easily carried out. 

3. They should not require much apparatus. 

4. They should lead up to a stimulating and cleansing bath. 
There is no better system than that of Lieut. J. P. Muller. 

Muller is a Dane. He is said to be nearly a perfect man physically. 
He has won 132 prizes, all firsts but nine, and not in any one re- 
stricted field of athletics. He has sprinted and ran long distances, 
jumped, rowed, skated, thrown the hammer, put the shot, wrestled, 
etc., etc. These are his eight exercises : 

1. Stretch the body, arch the chest and revolve the body in a 
circle twice. 

2. Kick forward and back sixteen times with each leg. 

3. Raise the upper part of the body from flat position and lower it 
again twelve times. 

4. Twist the body round, standing, then bend down till one hand 
touches the floor at the side, ten times. 

5. Swing the arms round in small circles sixteen times, standing 
in the " lunge " position. 

6. Lie down and rotate the legs similarly, eight times. 

7. Stand and bend forward to alternate sides with the arms 
stretched straight from the shoulder, ten twists. 

8. Lie face downwards with weight resting on hands and toes and 



36 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

lift and drop the body by bending and straightening the arms, 
twelve times. 

Then take a quick plunge or sponge in cold water, a thorough 
drying and a brisk rubbing of every part of the body with both 
hands. 

Muller allows fifteen minutes for the whole operation, including 
bath, drying and rubbing. To count and to perform the exercises 
rhythmically makes them more interesting. 

Work as Exercise 

In his " Making the Most of Life " Dr. Luther H. Gulick tells 
how Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, Director of the Harvard Gymnasium, 
when a boy used his daily activities to make himself strong. 

" Henceforth," he says, " going up and down stairs was simply a 
means of strengthening the muscles of the legs. Lifting weights 
and bearing burdens were approved ways of developing the muscles 
of the back and loins and strengthening the arms and shoulders. 
Plowing, mowing, raking, pitching, hoeing, chopping, digging, 
hoisting, and all the different forms of labor that fall to the lot of 
the country boy, were classified according to their effects in develop- 
ing certain muscles of the body and were entered upon with the same 
zest with which one would engage in a course of systematic exer- 
cise. The proud consciousness that I was improving my physique 
and adding to my strength and vigor, lightened the burden of labor 
and afforded me great satisfaction," 



IV 

THREE FACTORS OF PERFECT HEALTH 

LET me make some rather more general suggestions, 
for Scouts and those who are not Scouts, for girls as 
well as boys, by which we may fight against the tendency, 
that Mr. Roosevelt has always preached against, of " soft 
hands, soft heads, soft hearts." 
First, I name: plenty of sleep. 

COCKCROW COURAGE 

" Cockcrow courage " was the kind Napoleon admired. 
The American Indians knew it was uncommon, so they 
used to attack at daybreak, when the white men were sleepy 
and bewildered. 

How is it with you? Do you still wake up laughing as 
you used to when you were a child ? Are you ready for the 
day at the morning's first reveille? 

"If men will not drink of morning air at the fountain- 
head of the day," said Henry Thoreau, the woodsman, " why 
then we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops 
for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription 
ticket to morning time." 

" Morning is when I am awake," he says in another 
place, " and there is a dawn in me." 

The way to have a dawn in you is to get plenty of sleep 
before it comes. 

37 



38 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" When the world begins to look faded, when every one 
who comes in knocks over a chair, and every one who goes 
out slams the door, the probabilities are that you need seven 
nights of good sleep." Agnes Gilbert tells of a king who 
would consider for a wife only one who ate three square 
meals a day and slept all night without waking. He knew 
she would at least be good-natured. She it is who brings 
forth the novel thought that what matters about sleep is 
not its length but its quality. "If you go to sleep/' she 
says, " as a child goes to his mother's arms, confident that 
some healing will come that will soothe all the hurt of the 
day, then sleep will flow through you like light through a 
crystal ball. Prepare your mind and body for sleep as 
you would prepare them for a journey to a distant and 
beautiful country." 

I know of a high-school athlete who had such a lofty 
idea of the value of sleep that once when his mother asked 
him the reason why he did not seem to be quite up to the 
mark, after a moment's reflection he replied : " I know, 
mother. I didn't go to bed last night until half -past nine! " 

My second suggestion as to keeping in fighting trim is 
what Robert Haven Schauffler calls 

" THE BRIMMING CUP " 

By this he means, Ever-increasing Vitality, or as he calls 
it, " over-flowingness of life." 

He illustrates what he has in mind by the man who, 
though tempted to spend his principal, keeps it in the bank 
at interest and lets it grow. 

Then he goes on in his happy way : " To keep exuber- 
ant one must possess more than just enough vitality to fill 
the cup of the present. There must be enough to make it 



THREE FACTORS OF PERFECT HEALTH 39 

brim over. The more exuberance of all varieties one has 
stored up in body, mind and spirit, the more of it one can 
bring to bear at the right moment upon the things that 
count. A little of this precious commodity is what often 
makes the difference between the ordinary and the supreme 
achievement. The happy man is the one who possesses 
these three kinds of overplus, and whose will is powerful 
enough to keep them all healthy." 

It is such possession that explains not only why Colonel 
Roosevelt has always tried to be good, but why, as one has 
said, he is " good so loud." He has made a brimming in- 
vestment of his vitality. 

It doesn't take a big enemy to beat our bodies. The 
" common cold " germ has been called by Samuel Hopkins 
Adams " the little bad boy of the gang who, having once 
broken into the system, turns around and calls back to the 
bigger boys, ' Come on in, fellers. The door's open ! ' " 

Have you ever noticed what fatigue does to you, how 
it makes you lose first what you last struggled to gain? 
It robs you not of the basic virtues, honesty,' industry, fidel- 
ity, but it at once takes away those fine traits that you have 
earned with such pains, courtesy, considerateness, apprecia- 
tion. On the other hand have you not noticed how much 
more life means to you when you feel well? When you 
are full of vitality you put it into the dullest work you have 
to do and it seems to blossom. You remember in Bunyan's 
" Pilgrim's Progress " the angels are spoken of as " the shin- 
ing ones." The only human folks that shine, that live 
really vivid lives, are those that abound in good health. 

Girls especially are so intense that they do not realize 
that not all exercise is strength-giving. " There are," says 
Dr. B. Wallace Hamilton, " two types of exercise : exer- 



4 o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

cise of effort and exercise of endurance. Gymnasium drill, 
for example, is an exercise of effort. A union of recreation 
with work involving a pleased acquiescence in the per- 
former is necessary with this type of exercise. Exercises 
of endurance, on the other hand, such as basketball, rowing 
races, rope-skipping — all hard-played games — and a great 
deal of the apparatus work in a gymnasium, produce an 
over-development of one part of the body at the expense 
of the rest. They tend to exhaust and rack the body and 
discourage efforts to secure good health.' , While this 
physician would not by any means discourage lively games, 
yet he insists that the net result of all our exercise should 
be gain, not loss. He therefore emphasizes his counsel by 
putting it in capitals: 

"TAKE JUST ENOUGH EXERCISE TO 
STRENGTHEN THE BODY GRADUALLY AND EN- 
ABLE IT TO PRODUCE EACH DAY MORE EN- 
ERGY THAN IT CONSUMES/' 

One more suggestion about getting into fighting trim is 
that one should keep constantly before him some definite 
ideal to reach. 

GREAT PHYSICAL IDEALS 

I am told that when Eugene Sandow, the athlete, was a 
weak boy of thirteen, his father took him to the Art Mu- 
seum, where he saw statues of the Apollo Belvidere and 
Hercules. " Did such men ever live ? " he asked his father. 
"Where did they get such splendid ideas of men?" 
" From the Greeks," said his father. " How did they be- 
come such men ? " " By exercise," he was told. " Could 
I do it? " he asked. " Why not? " his father answered. 

You know the result. 



THREE FACTORS OF PERFECT HEALTH 41 

Richard Jefferies, the nature lover, said that he could pray 
with his body, and he was fond of calling attention to the 
way the finest of the old Greek statues represented men and 
women whose bodies were the very images of beautiful 
lives. Looking upon their bodies one felt like saying: 
Here lives a prince. Even health itself is largely depend- 
ent upon such a noble viewpoint. Anybody can be sick 
who takes the attitude of being a victim. An athlete of will 
is almost never sick, and when he is he gets well easily. 

I don't believe any boy or girl ever reached a high stand- 
ard of vigor by merely going alone into his room and 
doggedly doing a lot of exercises by rote. There must be 
some motive power big enough to keep one at it. One of 
these motives has just been suggested, and it is one of 
the best: admiring somebody who is strong. My neigh- 
bor, Tom Spalding, has in his room a statuette of an athlete 
which he looks at every morning before he starts his ex- 
ercises. # His chum, Sam Ellis, visualizes his ideal by a 
portrait of a college sprinter whom he knows. A third has 
nothing to look at, but he has read how another boy, phy- 
sically inferior, by patient self-mastery and practice got on 
the team senior year. And still another is inspired by a 
mere chart, the chart of the ideal dimensions of a lad of 
his own age. 

If you have a goal to work for, you are more likely to 
attain. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR GIRLS 

Since some special reference has been made in this chapter to the 
tendency of girls to spend physically faster than they earn, a few 
more hints may be welcome as to their development. 

Doctor Dudley A. Sargent, Director of the Harvard Gymnasium, 
describes the girl's ideal figure as follows : " Girls in their early 



42 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

youth and well along into their teens have a boyish figure — that is, 
narrow hips, supple body, straight and slender limbs. This narrow- 
hipped, slender-limbed figure is the one which all girls in their teens 
should aspire to gain, since it will enable them to run, jump, swim, 
skate, dance and engage in those forms of athletics and gymnastics 
that tend to try the wind and thus develop the heart and lungs. All 
such exercises as running, lawn tennis, squash, basket-ball, esthetic 
dancing and general gymnastics which involve stretching of the 
limbs and extreme extension, flexion and twisting of the body or 
trunk help to keep the figure lithe, graceful and boyish. During 
early youth girls tend to grow in length of body and limbs, rather 
than in breadth and thickness. At the age of eighteen or twenty 
more muscle is developed, more adipose tissue is taken on, thus 
increasing the girth and the compactness of figure." 

For developing grace and proper strength, he says : " I do not 
know of any better way of assisting girls to secure graceful figures 
than by urging them to participate from early youth to full maturity 
in a great variety of physical exercises, including athletic sports 
and games. The attainment of physical perfection and an all-round 
development through school work and gymnastic training should be 
the ambition of every girl up to the age of twenty-five years. Until 
this time her ideals should be the boyish and athletic types." 

The doctor specifically recommends: walking, skating on ict and 
on the rink, for developing the lower parts of the body, and for 
developing the upper parts : archery, swimming, bicycling, tennis in 
moderation. He also names as " the one exercise in which women 
are supreme and the one which interests them more than any other," 
dancing, especially esthetic dancing. He regards the gymnasium 
as the necessary substitute for girls who cannot get these free exer- 
cises already named, because of their confinement in the city. 

Dr. Sargent's suggestion for an exercise to strengthen a girl 
where she needs it most (quoted from the Ladies' Home Journal) : 
" Stand with the right foot advanced twenty- four inches beyond the 
left foot, and with the hands well above the hips and the elbows 
drawn back. From this position bend forward and touch the floor 
with the fingers just beyond the right foot, and immediately 
straighten up again, throwing the weight back to the left leg and 
drawing the elbows back of the sides of the body, as if rowing a boat. 



THREE FACTORS OF PERFECT HEALTH 43 

Repeat this exercise from ten to thirty times, then place the left foot 
forward and try it again from that side. This is a splendid exercise 
for developing the muscles of the back and loins and strengthening 
young women where they need strength the most." 

In her " Mothers and Daughters " Mrs. Burton Chance gives the 
following simple exercises for every morning in the year, somewhat 
simpler than those suggested in the previous chapter. These are 
used by special permission. 

"I know how hard it is to get up enough enthusiasm and interest 
to take regular exercise in one's room morning and evening. Yet 
this is an invaluable habit to form, particularly if such exercises are 
the preparation for a day of study and indoor work. Many girls 
find it almost impossible to overcome the sluggishness of the body 
when it is time to get up. They feel as if every muscle was weighted 
down, and to rise becomes a matter so difficult that it can only be 
accomplished after repeated efforts. Here the will must take a part, 
and insist that the body obey it. A few exercises taken immediately 
upon rising will do wonders for this sluggishness by starting the 
circulation of the blood, invigorating and helping the body in its 
preparation to meet the work of the day. I will mention three 
simple exercises that can be taken in the early morning occupying 
only a very few moments, yet accomplishing immediately the needed 
reaction. 

" (1) Stand straight, head up, heels together, hands lightly 
placed on hips. Then bend your body slowly backward and for- 
ward as far as you are able to — also sidewise. Repeat this exer- 
cise as often as you can without feeling fatigued. 

" (2) Stand straight, head up, heels together, hands hanging 
down. Begin to raise your hands, slowly, drawing in your breath 
as you do so. When your lungs are quite inflated, your hands 
should be touching above your head. Hold the position an instant, 
and then slowly lower the hands and let out the breath. This exer- 
cise requires practice, and is only effective when the drawing in and 
letting out of the breath is done very, very slowly. It is a splendid 
chest developer, and is made even more beneficial by slowly rising 
on your toes at the same time as you draw in your breath and raise 
your arms. It is a beautiful exercise when done gracefully and with 
balance. 



44 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" (3) Raise your arms straight above your head, taking a deep 
breath, and then bend downward at the waist, knees stiff, until your 
fingers touch the floor. This is a rather difficult exercise, but 
after a little practice is very invigorating." 



V 
GET INTO THE GAME 

FORTY thousand able-bodied men sat on the bleachers 
in Manchester, England, watching a professional foot- 
ball game. When the call to arms was sent throughout 
England only a corporal's guard for the army appeared out 
of these on-lookers. How different was the response in 
the universities of Oxford and Cambridge ! Two-thirds of 
the Oxford students went at the first summons. The col- 
leges were practically emptied, save for American Rhodes 
scholars and other foreigners. These stirring lines from 
the humorous weekly, Punch, tell what occurred at Oxford : 

No more can essayists inveigh 

Against the youth of Oxford, slighting 

Her " young barbarians all at play," 
When nine in ten are fighting, 

And some, the goodliest and the best, 
Beloved of comrades and commanders, 

Have passed untimely to their rest 
Upon the plains of Flanders. 

No ; when two thousand of her sons 
Are mustered under freedom's banner, 

None can declaim — except the Huns — 
Against the Oxford manner. 

For lo ! amid her spires and streams, 
The lure of cloistered ease forsaking, 
45 



46 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

The dreamer, noble in her dreams, 
Is nobler in her waking. 

These men were not rooters; they were players. They 
were trained sportsmen, who were ready for any duty. 
They never learned how to sit on the bleachers at Eton and 
Rugby, or at Magdalen and Merton. 

A rooter is called " a good sport " when often he is most 
unsportsmanlike. A man who couldn't catch an easy pop- 
fly roars his abuse at the second-baseman when he lets a 
hot grounder pass between his legs. A fellow who if he 
played five innings himself would be laid up for a week 
curses a runner who gets caught " asleep " between bases. 
A high-school man " knocks " the coach who is trying to 
lick a good team into shape, when the one thing that team 
needs to make good is the confidence of the school. Says 
Frederick A. Reilly, an expert on school athletics : " To 
judge by the amount of space devoted to ' Sports ' in the 
daily papers, one would imagine that we were the greatest 
nation of athletes, of lovers of outdoor sport, the world 
ever saw. As a matter of fact, most of us get our exer- 
cise by reading ' the sporting page/ by discussing the situa- 
tion in the latest prize fight, or, at best, by watching some 
hired man bat or kick a ball around a vacant lot." Dr. 
Wingert, coach at Ohio State University, reports that while 
over a million dollars a year are spent on college athletics 
alone, less than twenty per cent, of all college students take 
any active part in athletics. " What about the other 83.6 
per cent. ? Well, they are privileged to pay dues, buy tick- 
ets, and get their exercise by rooting from the ' bleach- 
ers'!" 

They order these things much better in England. An 
American student was very much surprised, when he went 



GET INTO THE GAME 47 

over to England a short time ago on a Rhodes scholarship, 
to be asked, soon after his arrival, to join the football team. 
He expected to be kept months as a candidate, but he was 
told on the first afternoon that he was to join the game. 
He played wretchedly, of course, and his side lost, with a 
score of forty to nothing. As he was pedaling back on his 
wheel with his English chum, the Englishman said to him 
heartily, " What a splendid game we had this afternoon! " 
The American, who had been holding his head down with 
shame at his own share, looked up, and seeing that his 
friend was genuinely in earnest, took his attitude, and ex- 
claimed, " Why, it was a fine game, wasn't it? " The Eng- 
lishman exclaimed at the joy of the game; the American 
had thought that there was no fun except in victory. 

" What a screaming farce it would be," says Mr. Reilly, 
" if the professors and tutors were to select from the can- 
didates for admission to their classes the few who showed 
any evidence of brains and proceeded to coach these in- 
dividuals for months in the subjects in which they were 
strongest — the other candidates meanwhile playing ping- 
pong or reading novels — and, at the end, allowed the latter 
to purchase tickets to come and watch the ' cracks ' take 
their examinations ! Is it any less a farce for our faculties 
to select a few young fellows, already blessed with unusual 
strength and skill, and groom them for a spectacular con- 
test that partakes more of the nature of a hippodrome ex- 
hibition than of an educational institution? ... If there 
is any good in athletics — and there certainly is — then 
every student is entitled to an equal opportunity to get all 
the good he can out of it." 

The leaders of American sport have begun to see the need 
of making play possible to a larger proportion of the stu- 



48 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

dents. They have learned that in one English college twen- 
ty-five Rugby teams and the same number of soccer teams, 
besides field hockey and lacrosse teams, are seen at play on 
acres and acres of field every pleasant afternoon, while 
down at the river thirty-five eight-oared crews are at work. 
Everybody is out playing something. In one of our schools, 
Phillips Andover Academy, the English plan was tried out 
some years ago. A rule was made that every pupil must 
take part in some sport regularly. Of the five hundred 
students, two hundred chose football and the other three hun- 
dred scattered among soccer, track, cross-country running, 
and tennis, in the order mentioned. The first half of the 
football season was devoted to universal try-outs, and the 
last half to competition with other schools. The result was 
as gratifying in the way of victory as it was in the way of 
a general good time. Andover led its famous antagonist, 
Exeter, which had devoted practically the entire season to 
preparing for this game. This was partly due to the fact 
that, under the new plan of training, each individual who 
made the team had four times as much actual practice as 
under the old method. The greatest satisfaction, however, 
was in seeing the bleachers empty and the field covered with 
boys having a mighty good time. 

Play is not only one of man's greatest privileges, but one 
of his most important rights. Let us work for some such 
spirit in each of our schools. It is the spirit which will 
take students off the bleachers and into the field that will 
make them ready actually to play the game of life and not 
merely to look on. 



VI 
TRAINING TELLS 

DR. PAUL WITHINGTON, the great all-round ath- 
lete of Harvard, says : " Let no boy hesitate to enter 
the field of athletics because he is too small or too weak. 
There are many great ' little ' men in the athletic world 
to-day, and the boy who is weak has no better way of be- 
coming strong." 

William F. Garcelon, when an official of the Harvard 
Athletic Association, formed a class for "non-athletic fresh- 
men." They took a variety of athletic exercises. " None 
of these boys had ever attempted any of these things be- 
fore, but every one of them took to it like ducks to the 
water. One member of the class became so proficient in 
jumping that he won his numerals in an inter-freshman 
meet. One later became a member of the 'varsity track 
team. Hardly a year passes but one or two of these boys 
become leading candidates for some one of the many Har- 
vard teams. I can think of no boy who has worked con- 
scientiously who, at the end of the given time, was not a 
very fair performer in at least one of the chosen activities. 
Several have become very proficient." 

Dr. Withington adds this interesting fact about men who 
do not become athletes until their full development : " The 
majority of great college athletes either played no part at 
all or a minor part in school contests. They were either 
too small for the team, or had not gained their strength 

49 



5 o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

and poise." Dr. Alvin C. Kraenzlein of the University of 
Pennsylvania agrees with this statement, and adds: 
" Many a man, just because he has not abused his body and 
is ready to go into the game with a sound heart, deep lungs, 
and strong limbs, can outstrip the fellow who began the 
game too early." 

R. Norris Williams, 2d, of Harvard, the present national 
tennis champion, says: "If he really has the desire to be- 
come a first-class player and has the backbone to do so, I 
really think that any person with a reasonable amount of 
ability can succeed. The way to do this, however, is to 
map out a course to yourself and to stick to it." 

Dr. Withington explains this. It was not any new 
coaching or any new-born ability. " It was perseverance. 
These are the cases in which the coach rejoices and which 
go to make athletics truly worth while." 

"THE COLONEL" 

Julian Street has recently written a book entitled " The 
Most Interesting American." You do not need to wrinkle 
your brows long to guess that it is about Theodore Roose- 
velt. 

Now you may or may not like the Colonel. If there are 
any two subjects that I find it possible to quarrel with my 
friends about on sight, they are Peace and Roosevelt. 
Nearly every one I know, however, thinks well of him when 
he was young. 

Sometimes when a boy goes to college you feel that he 
has a good will to be good and that if something bad doesn't 
run him off the track and upset him, and if he finds uplift- 
ing companions and doesn't learn to like to gamble and can 
be kept from falling in love until he graduates, he has it in 




The Colonel. 



TRAINING TELLS 5 1 

him to be of some service in the world. But of Mr. Roose- 
velt you feel that at a very early date he must have known 
where he was going and got started, and that people began 
to get out from his way. All this is admirable. 

He made the most of the stuff he had at the beginning. 
He never had to contend against poverty, but he had almost 
every other possible difficulty. When he was a boy he was 
sickly. All his life he has been near-sighted. It was a 
sorrow that drove him out as a ranchman and a defeat 
that made him a hunter. When he went into politics the 
politicians almost at once began to conspire against him. 
He never reached any office he sought for and all that he 
did get were given him because it was thought they would 
shelve him. But places that covered other people out of 
sight could not hide Mr. Roosevelt, and he always became 
inevitable and indispensable. 

While he was a young man it seemed likely that we 
would become a hammock-loving, ease-questing people. 
We were spending our time and money in soft luxuries and 
passive pleasures. Then Mr. Roosevelt's personal tastes 
became known. He had money and culture and plenty of 
temptations to take his exercise in a library. He was near- 
sighted, too, and in danger of getting fat. What had he 
done ? He had chased the pioneers out to the frontier and 
lived their life. He had hunted big game in hard places. 
He had boxed and fenced and wrestled. He went horse- 
back-riding every day and taught his boys to be fearless 
swimmers and campers. He praised football because he 
saw it was better than fighting and was necessary as a hard- 
ening process in our colleges. He fought nature-faking 
because he saw it would disappoint people when they really 
tried to study nature. I can myself testify that I gave up 



52 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

nature study because none of those delightful idyls ever 
happened when I was by, and the books didn't explain how 
long I had to wait or how hard to look to discover the least 
of nature's secrets. And whatever he did or said was done 
with such infectious zest and sympathy. A friend once said 
of him, " When he is at a funeral he acts like the corpse, 
and when he goes to a wedding every one takes him for 
the bridegroom." 

This is the way his tremendous, energetic personality im- 
pressed a visitor at the White House during his first ad- 
ministration. The paragraph is from the American Maga- 
zine. 

" He was in another room, but I could recognize his voice 
from his photographs. It is a voice that underscores every- 
thing but the periods. It is the kind of a voice that one 
expects to be backed up by fists, teeth, artillery and battle- 
ships, if necessary . . . Then we saw him in real action. 
He frowned tremendously, and a pent-up epigram exploded 
with a loud bang. Passing on, he heard a proposition and 
dismissed it with two ' No's ' that would have cut a ship's 
cable in two — all in good humor and friendliness." 

Then . the author describes the president's appearance : 
" He is carefully built of selected and durable material. 
His arms and shoulders are of the Harvard Crew model. 
His neck is the early Sullivan type . . . The Roosevelt 
lower lip is the hardest working, most versatile, most con- 
scientious lower lip in the world. More vividly than any 
other feature it portrays the Roosevelt temperament and 
typifies the strenuous ideal." 

In all this the chief thing we notice is that we have been 
talking about a man who would not allow himself to miss 
any kind of training that could make him capable. I am re- 



TRAINING TELLS 53 

minded of a story about two men who sat one day on a pier, 
fishing. One had a bite and in the excitement he fell into 
the water. The other man watched him struggle, but did 
nothing to aid him. 

" I can't swim ! " shouted the man in the water. He went 
under, and when he came up he shouted again : " I can't 
swim! " 

The man on the pier watched him with languid interest. 

The man in the water sank again. When he came up he 
gasped : " I can't swim ! " 

" Well, my friend," commented the man on the pier, 
" this is a queer time to be boasting of it ! " 

We cannot commend the attitude of the man on the 
bank, but we see at once that the position of the man in 
the water was fatal. He was perishing because he was 
not fully equipped to live. 

When Colonel Roosevelt is wrong it is never because he 
is unready. When he is right he is so sure of it because 
of his own personal vitality, that he becomes one animated 
exclamation point. 

All of us who imitate him will not become President. 
But if we get into training, and don't shirk and don't whim- 
per, and won't recognize defeat when it runs into us, we 
shall do work to our full capacity — which is the main thing 
expected of us. The world may not know us, but it must 
feel us. 

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TRAINING 

" Training," says Dr. Paul Withington, " means nothing more 
than leading a healthy, normal life. It means plenty of sleep, 
plenty of good common food, plenty of fresh air and a moderate 
amount of well-directed exercise; it means doing the daily work 
in a business-like and systematic manner." 



54 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

As to diet, " Mike " Murphy, Pennsylvania's great trainer, used 
to suggest the following: 

Breakfast: One chop (sometimes two) or eight ounces of beef, 
two soft-boiled eggs, one baked potato, toast or bread, milk or 
mild tea; prunes or apple-sauce (no cream or sugar added). 

Dinner: Roast beef, lamb, mutton or fowl, boiled or mashed 
potato, vegetables and fruits in season. Boiled rice and milk, or 
cornmeal mush. A light pudding, milk or tea, toast and bread. 

Supper: Cold meat, roast beef, lamb, mutton or fowl, one small 
steak, one potato, toast or fresh Graham bread, prunes, apple-sauce 
or baked apple, milk or mild tea. 

" The diet I have given," he said, " is as good as can be secured, 
but if care is exercised an equally good diet can be secured at one's 
own home. What the athlete should be most careful about is to 
chew his food well (" Some people eat as though they thought their 
stomachs had teeth" — Harry H. Moore), eat nothing difficult to 
digest, and always keep the stomach in order. This can usually be 
done with any simple diet selected." 

About baths, Dr. A. C. Kraenzlein says : " When the hard work 
of the season is at hand, you must watch yourself with care. Don't 
stick to the cold bath at this time. Take a warm shower after every 
workout. It will help take out the soreness and, above all, will keep 
the pores open and allow free exit to all the waste material that 
your body is continually throwing off. Use soap ; keep clean. The 
rub-down is an important part. It is not necessary to be rubbed 
down by another. You can do it yourself if you will take the time. 
Keep the muscles of your limbs, shoulders, and back well massaged." 

" Cleanliness," says Dr. Withington, " is all-important. Athletes 
are often upset by boils and other skin diseases, because they take 
no care to be clean. Bathing too little and wearing dirty clothes 
while exercising are causes for skin troubles. It is often a source 
of false pride among athletes never to allow their athletic clothes 
to be washed. There is no excuse for this." 

As to sleep, Dr. Withington says : " Nothing is so important as 
plenty of sleep taken at regular hours. No boy in training ought 
to do with less than nine hours of sleep ; a great many need a full 
ten. Ten o'clock is the usual bed hour for college teams, nine- 
thirty before important events." 



TRAINING TELLS 55 

What Ralph Craig, the Olympic runner, says about sprinting is 
true of training for all the sports. " A boy should work hard every 
day, doing as much as he can without overdoing. He should keep 
at it every day; on the other hand, in his daily work he should be 
very careful not to overdo, for any one day." 

Not enough attention is paid to the reaction after a season. " Let 
down gradually on your training," says Keene Fitzpatrick. " Re- 
member that you have been under a strain, and do not let go at 
once. Get plenty of exercise and plenty of sleep. Cut down your 
daily work gradually. The sudden breaking-off of training may do 
you great harm." 



VII 
BREAKING TRAINING 

THERE was once a high-school relay racing team that 
had been the champion of its neighborhood for several 
years. When winter came again it was in high hopes of re- 
newed triumphs, for nearly all the old victors were back in 
school to play. The night came when the interscholastic 
games were to be played. There was great excitement, es- 
pecially because the races were to be run in the home town 
of the champions. 

The relay race came last. Around and around the curv- 
ing track that had been laid in the big armory the contest- 
ants ran. Each runner wore the colors of his school, and 
as each individual of the five who constituted the separate 
teams crouched, touched hands, and swung swiftly into his 
place in the course, a new thrill of applause broke from his 
watching schoolmates. 

The old victors broke into the lead from the beginning. 
Their first man ran far ahead of his competitors. The 
second increased the distance, and the third did as well. 
But the fourth started uncertainly, he ran unsteadily, he 
stumbled and fell, and when the fifth and last man in his 
team touched his hand and sped on with all his might to 
make up for the loss, it was too late, and the champions 
were badly defeated. 

That fourth man had broken training the night before 

56 



BREAKING TRAINING 57 

the race. He trusted to his record and his natural agility 
to do for him what, in that fierce contest, could be accom- 
plished only by the best athletic condition. Those were 
not enough. All the prowess of his teammates was not 
sufficient. And the sting was worse than that of defeat 
by his antagonists, for he had defeated himself. The shame 
was not that of honorable defeat, for he had been disloyal 
to his school. 

" BUT IT WONT HURT ME " 

" But it won't hurt me any." I suppose every fool who 
was going to ruin himself some day has said that. " The 
essence of immorality is to make an exception of yourself." 
Perhaps you are not going to ruin yourself, but if you do 
yourself only a little harm, what is the wisdom of keeping 
it up? 

I had this out very earnestly once with a boy who was 
a frequent smoker. " It won't hurt me any," he told me. 
And, do you know, I was honestly doubtful if it would, 
he was so tall and vigorous and energetic. I hadn't heard 
from him about the matter for five or six years, until I 
happened to tell him of a malady for which I had seen a 
doctor. " My doctor tells me I have the same trouble," 
he confessed, " and he wants me to stop smoking." The 
boy had made himself my equal in age within five years, he 
had grown old twenty-five years in that time, because it 
couldn't hurt him. 

This is why the shrewd though selfish business man to- 
day practices self-denial. As one cynically said, " I let my 
competitor smoke." 

The trouble with the hurt, when it comes, is that some- 
how it doesn't do hurt only in one place. A freshman was 



58 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

once telling his father, says Lucy Elliot Keeler, how he was 
going to sow his wild oats, have his fling and then settle 
down, and be all the wiser and stronger from having seen 
the world. Just then his " kid " brother brought in some 
toast that he had made. The lad had left it on the stove 
until it had gotten black, and then had scraped the black off. 
" But," said the father significantly as he tasted it, " it 
tastes all through of the smutch." 

HOW A GREAT GAME WAS LOST 

The most striking instance of a great loss that was the 
result of breaking training came to light not long ago. 
The impressiveness of it is partly due to the fact that it 
had lain hidden for nearly 140 years. 

There was a group of wretched and degraded people 
living in a bog in New Jersey. They had caused so much 
trouble and expense and were in such misery that it was 
determined to break them up. Those who were sick were 
to be sent to hospitals, those who were insane or feeble- 
minded to asylums, those who were drunkards and criminals 
were to be carefully tended and if possible cured. 

Before extreme measures were undertaken it was decided 
to make a thorough study of the whole situation and its 
causes. The investigators established themselves in a clean 
little town over the hill and went to work. 

After they had been studying the situation a little they 
noted that, in the village where they were boarding, there 
were a number of excellent families that bore the same name 
as this family-group down in the bog. They were told 
however that there was no relationship between them. 

Suddenly though in tracing back the genealogy of the 
bog-people they did find a bond of connection, and that a 



BREAKING TRAINING 59 

very startling one. As the whole story came to light, it 
proved to be an almost incredible one. It was as follows. 

A young Revolutionary soldier had made a careless, 
temporary connection with a half-witted tavern maid, and 
then had gone away. Probably unknown to him, a daugh- 
ter was born to them, and she was the ancestress of this 
whole neighborhood of wretchedness. There had been 480 
of these descendants, of whom only 46 had been normal. 
Many of them had been immoral, alcoholic and worthless, 
and 143 of them had been feeble-minded. 

A few years later this youth married a young woman of 
good family, and she in time was the ancestress of 496 
descendants, of whom all were normal but two. Not one 
of these children had a criminal career, but on the contrary 
they had been so prominent and so useful in the community 
and the State that it has never been thought wise to publish 
their name, and the study has been published under the 
title, " The Kallikak Family." 

Just once the young soldier broke training, failed in 
manliness, and for a century and a half the State of New 
Jersey has been paying his penalty for him and hundreds 
of damaged and hopeless lives have come into being and 
cursed his memory. And the end is not even yet. 

SUGGESTED BOOKS 

For girls: " The Three Gifts of Life," by Nellie M. Smith. 
For boys: " Keeping in Condition," by Harry H. Moore. 
For both (giving in full the story above) : " The Kallikak Fam- 
ily," by H. H. Goddard. 



VIII 

WHAT GREAT ATHLETES SAY ABOUT 
WHAT TO DO 

WOULDN'T it be fine if you could happen into a circle 
of coaches and record-breakers and listen while they 
talked about how to train for the big sports and what are 
the essentials for making good? So many of these men 
have gone on record about these matters that we can, in this 
chapter, practically have this privilege. For I have made 
believe that you, my reader, have a dozen important ques- 
tions that you want to ask these men, and I have hunted 
up the writings or interviews in which they have answered 
them. 

DO ATHLETICS PAY? 

Dr. Paul Withington of Harvard is probably the greatest 
all-round college athlete of our time. He made the un- 
usual record of being on the football eleven, the crew, the 
swimming team, and was a champion wrestler. He says to 
you : " The essentials morally of athletics are fair play. 
Every true athlete wishes nothing but what he gains fairly 
and squarely. God has given most of us bodies sufficiently 
strong, perseverance sufficiently lasting, and the spirit of 
fair play. If we develop all these and abuse none, there is 
little reason why most of us should not be athletes." 

Fielding H. Yost, coach of the University of Michigan, 
speaking of the mental value of football, says : " The 

60 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 61 

game as it is played under the new rules is a game for 
thinkers. The boy who cannot think quickly and reason 
clearly cannot hope to play football successfully. The boy 
who is not sincere, determined, and possessed of the right 
sort of fighting spirit cannot excel in football." 

As to the kind of spirit that athletics develops, Edward 
J. Hart, an All-America tackle in football, says: "Remem- 
ber that a player who won't be outplayed can't be outplayed. 
After each charge and tackle make up your mind to do a 
little better next time. Play hard, keep cool, fall in love 
with your position." 

In regard to the effect of athletics upon the will, Henry 
S. Curtis, the eminent playground authority, says : ■ " The 
best training that we know for the type of instant decision 
and execution that virtue requires comes from athletics. 
A boy is playing baseball. All good play involves a train- 
ing in instantaneous judgment. The person who acts in 
this way in regard to temptation will be a moral person." 
He adds : " It seems to me that it is well worth putting 
play into the curriculum to require sportsmanship alone." 
And, speaking later of the democratic influence of athletics, 
he says : " There is always an almost complete equality 
between those who play together. You have to ' deliver 
the goods ' if you stay on the baseball team, though your 
father is a millionaire." 

As to the influence of athletics on a boy's ideals, Dr. 
Curtis states : " It is in idleness that boys form the habit 
of smoking. The playground gives him different ideals of 
manliness. He soon learns that if he would succeed in 
athletics he must abstain from cigarettes, because they * take 
his wind.' Another bad habit which organized play serves 
to break is the habit of drinking. The young man knows 



62 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that it is one or the other, — that he cannot drink and be 
an athlete." 

In respect to the social effect of play, Dr. Curtis quotes 
Grover Cleveland as saying that every man should retain 
through life some form of sport, because that was the only 
way a man could remain a good comrade. 

As to the all-round result of play, Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, 
Harvard's famous teacher of gymnastics, says it consists 
of " some of the strength of the strong man, some of the 
alertness and endurance of the athlete, and some of the 
grace and skill of the gymnast, all combined with the poise 
and dignity of a gentleman." 

A great moral value in athletics, says Ralph Edwards, 
who has made a specialty of their study, is that honesty 
brings its own reward, and brings it quick. " In a foot- 
ball game, the moral drama of theft, detection, trial, con- 
demnation, penalty, and disgrace may be enacted in two 
minutes. That makes one of the incalculable moral values : 
the athlete has no time to ' think it over.' He must act 
instantaneously, almost automatically. The inwrought 
habit of honesty in athletics, therefore, is at one with ac- 
curacy, quickness, certainty, and success. It works for the 
man who works with it." 

IN VIEW OF WHAT WE HEAR ABOUT THE DAN- 
GERS OF FOOTBALL, IS IT A GOOD GAME FOR 
A HIGH-SCHOOL BOY? 

It now seems to be generally agreed that injuries in foot- 
ball occur principally among elevens that have not been 
properly trained or who do not have competent umpiring. 
" Those who are constantly criticizing our college foot- 
ball," said Michael Murphy, " would do well to consider the 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 63 

fact that at the six leading colleges of the East: Yale, 
Pennsylvania, Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, and Dartmouth, 
football has not, so far as I can recall, ever resulted in a 
fatal accident. I call attention to this to show what can be 
done to make the game safe. I am not disposed to deny 
that football is a rough game. But when cleanly played 
and when properly safeguarded, the element of danger is 
almost entirely eliminated. It is a well-known fact that 
more people are killed automobiling in a week than in 
football games in years. What would some mothers think 
if they were told that they risked more danger to their lives 
in shopping during Christmas holidays, than did their sons 
by playing football? It is a fact, nevertheless." 

" The serious injuries," says Fielding H. Yost, coach at 
the University of Michigan, "that befell men while play- 
ing football were, in my opinion, brought on by exhaustion, 
with only a few exceptions. For this reason I think that 
the division of the game into four periods, does more than 
any other one thing to bring about safer conditions. Many 
coaches were tempted to leave a good man in the game 
despite the fact that he had played until he was not capable 
of protecting himself. As it now stands, they can take this 
man out and then return him later in the game. The 
prohibiting of body-blocking on forward passes and kicks, 
and the passing of mass plays will also do much to eliminate 
danger. On the whole, the game under the revised rules 
should be such that it will endanger no life or limb. Any 
normal man who is in good condition should be able to 
stand the labor that is involved in a game of football." 

All the trainers are united that condition is essential for 
success and safety. Dr. A. C. Kraenzlein says : " It is 
not a game for poorly developed youngsters. They may 



64 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

overdo if they attempt to play it and spoil any opportunity 
that they may have of playing football in the future." Stan- 
field Wells, All-America end, agrees with this, and says: 
" Don't try to play football with bigger and heavier 
boys until you have your growth. It will gain you 
nothing. Keep yourself in good physical trim. And you 
will have a foundation that every football player must 
have." 

" Training for football," says Dean Briggs of Harvard, 
" means early hours, clean life, constant occupation for 
body and mind. That this game tides many a freshman 
over a great danger, by keeping him healthily occupied, I 
have come firmly to believe. It supplies what President 
Eliot calls ' a new and effective motive for resisting all the 
sins which weaken or corrupt the body.' " 

OUGHT HIGH-SCHOOL GIRLS TO GO IN FOR 
ATHLETICS? 

Not so much thought seems to have been given in this 
country to the value of athletics to girls as to boys. Dr. 
J. M. Tyler of Amherst College has pointed out that what 
most injures the health of high-school girls is that, at the 
time when boys are becoming most active in play, girls get 
back to the bleachers as spectators, and at the same period 
use up their strength with too strenuous social life. Miss 
Elizabeth Burchenal, instructor in athletics of girls in the 
schools of New York City, thinks that girls need games to 
take the place of the wholesome outdoor life that they used 
to live when they were little, but that they should play for 
sport, not for competition. Mrs. Frank M. Roessing says 
that girls ought not to have athletics but a greater variety 
of social games. They need them for self-expression and 



• ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 65 

they need them so as to learn how to get along together. 
This is not to say that girls should not play ball and tennis, 
but that they are not so much in need of the fighting ele- 
ment in their play as are their brothers. 

As to just what girls may best play, the following state- 
ments are condensed from the writings of Joseph Lee, our 
best-known authority on play of every sort. " Ball games 
especially seem to agree with girls, if indeed they did not 
originate with them. Baseball, not quite at its most in- 
tense point, squash, tennis, shinny, volley ball, basketball 
(women's rules), the players being duly examined and care- 
fully watched, are good games. So are all the running 
games in which competition has not acquired the fierceness 
that characterizes boys' sports. Big girls ought to keep 
on with their running and throwing games. Climbing is 
still good for girls. Swimming is always mentioned as ex- 
cellent. The traditional exercise for grown girls of course 
is dancing." Mr, Lee agrees with Miss Burchenal that 
fierce competition is not good for girls. " Girls ought to 
laugh and squeal over their games, not play them with the 
dogged spirit characteristic of young men's competition." 
And he thinks too that girls need jolly cooperative games, 
even more than do boys, in order to develop the spirit of 
pulling together. " To learn during these precious years 
to be a good team-mate and a good comrade is for any girl 
an experience that will bear fruit through her whole life 
and in more than one relation." 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE MORAL CON- 
DITION OF PRESENT-DAY ATHLETICS? 

William McCormick is the head of the Bethany Boys' 
Club of Reading. He thinks that athletics in themselves 



66 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

are wholesome, but that the things that surround them need 
to be cleaned up. He writes : 

" The sporting pages of the newspapers which abound 
in tales of clean living triumphant — which relate the 
achievements on ball diamonds and in the arena and on the 
race track of men who could not have won out had they 
not lived carefully and abstemiously — are the favorite loca- 
tion for liquor advertisements, and for the announcements, 
in such papers as will carry them, of questionable remedies 
for loathsome diseases. The inference is that the followers 
of the sporting page are people much given to drink and 
prone to the habits which make these questionable remedies 
necessary. 

"If you are a liquor advertiser and want to play up some 
particular brand of whisky, you will let your ' ad.' appear 
no place else but on the sporting page. That, too, is where 
you will advertise your cigarettes and your other com- 
modities which no athlete can safely indulge in. The 
athletes themselves do not indulge. But the followers of 
the sport indulge enthusiastically and voluminously. 

" A world's champion baseball day is a gala day for the 
barkeepers round about the ball park. An inter-collegiate 
football victory means a wet, wet night in the town of its. 
achievement, and in some towns hundreds of miles away. 

" Now the point of all this is that athletics, while a thing 
much to be desired in the training of boys, is also a pretty 
risky and dangerous undertaking. And to provide athletics 
and call them clean and to stop right there and to go no 
farther is a poor sort of business for the man who seeks 
to win boys for right living. 

" Athletics are not clean simply because you have fair 
rules and a capable umpire. Athletics ought to be purged 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 67 

of a good many dangerous details before they are entirely 
safe and sane. Betting on the games is one of the dangers. 
Profanity among players and officials is another. There 
are often bibulous and half-drunken officials at some sports 
which are supposed to be uplifting. And the bibulosity of 
these officials is winked at and overlooked because, for- 
sooth, they are men of distinction, who have won eminence 
in the athletic world. 

" Now there is nothing mollycoddlish in our suggestion 
that sports ought to be purged of much of their roughness. 
The physical roughness is not nearly so dangerous as the 
moral roughness." 

That there are schools and colleges where these influences 
exist, influences exerted not by the players themselves but 
by those who train them or who idly watch them, we cannot 
deny. Dr. Henry S. Curtis says that the corruption of 
unsportsmanlikeness sometimes goes so far that a manager 
of the big firm of Sears, Roebuck and Co., of Chicago, told 
him not long ago : " We never employ a man from certain 
well-known schools. We have found that the athletics at 
these schools are crooked, and dishonesty gets into the 
blood of the men, so that they cannot be depended on in 
business." Curtis himself adds: "It is certainly true of 
the athletics of hundreds of schools in this country to-day. 
On the other hand, we find that athletics offer the easiest 
way to teach a high conception of courtesy and honor. 
There is no other means of even similar value in developing 
a feeling of good comradeship in the student body. Can 
we afford to throw away these great opportunities, and 
allow coaches to train picked athletes to be ruffians and 
cheats ? Conditions are improving, but no existing reform 
strikes at the root of the matter." 



68 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

This is the program that the big athletic leaders are work- 
ing on now, for improvement. It is summarized by George 
W. Ehler, coach at the University of Minnesota : 

" i. Athletics — intercollegiate as well as intramural — 
to be made an essential part of the system or method of 
physical education in each institution. 

"2. The staff of the department of physical education 
to include every person having anything to do with any 
aquatic, gymnastic or athletic activity conducted in that in- 
stitution. 

" 3. The members of that staff to be selected in the same 
way and subjected to the same tests of education, training, 
experience, and instructional efficiency, as other members 
of the faculty, but in the matters of moral character, per- 
sonality and leadership to be required to measure up to the 
highest practical standard set by 'the college professor of 
the best type/ 

"4. Wherever the athletic instructor does not approxi- 
mate to the standard, displace him with one who does. Bet- 
ter no athletics at all than training and coaching by a man 
whose influence is not positively constructive. 

" 5. The athletic director should approximate ' the col- 
lege professor of the best type ' ; he should be a member of 
the ' faculty committee ' and properly its chairman. 

'.' 6. Positive and aggressive promotion of the ideas and 
ideals of clean sport by the athletic department among the 
student body and through them in their home communities, 
and further, through establishment of relations by the ex- 
tension method with communities, elementary and secondary 
schools and normal schools. 

" 7. The selection, education and training of college men 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 69 

of the best type to be physical educators and athletic direc- 
tors and instructors." 

When we turn to the best leaders of both our great pro- 
fessional and amateur games, we find a more encouraging 
situation. 

Says Connie Mack, the manager of the Philadelphia 
Athletics : " There has been a great change in baseball 
during the past fifteen years. In former years we did not 
get the high class of players that we are getting to-day. 
We have in our profession fully 50 per cent of college 
players. The balance of our players, with a very few ex- 
ceptions, are all well-educated men. Alcoholism is prac- 
tically eliminated from baseball. I believe that in five years 
from now at least 90 per cent of the players will be strictly 
temperate." 

Catcher Ira Thomas states, what most of us believe, that 
so far as the personal character of professional athletes is 
concerned, it is better than ever before. " The day is past 
when a baseball player of bad character can get on in the 
game. Managers in signing up new players inquire, these 
days, about their character as well as about their ability at 
the game. Club-owners want men whom they can trust 
morally and no more will they sit up nights waiting for 
their men to get in." The most convincing proof of this 
fact is in a letter that was recently written by an American 
League official to a young man who wanted to get into the 
league from the ranks of the amateurs. It is worth print- 
ing as a Code of a Modern Athlete. 

" Since you have asked me what obstacles stand in the 
way of your becoming a professional baseball player, I will 
frankly reply: 



;o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" You are charged with frequently being ungentlemanly 
in your conduct. It is said that you are rude and rough 
with rival players, that you use coarse language, and that 
you have been suspected of efforts to spike base-runners. 
If these charges are true, there is no sport in which you 
should be allowed to appear, and if they are untrue you 
should do everything in your power to prove their falsity. 
It is absolutely essential in the sports of to-day that a player 
should be as much of a gentleman as the average business 
man is. 

" You are charged with bad habits, practised when you 
are not on the diamond. No player can be trusted in im- 
portant games whose habits are bad. He needs to keep his 
body and his mind in the prime of condition for the work 
ahead of him, and if he does not, his nine will certainly be 
the sufferer in the end. All players with bad habits have 
not yet been eliminated from the national leagues, but their 
numbers are growing smaller every year. 

" Lastly, I am informed that you show an unwillingness 
to obey orders. If this is true, you would not make a good 
soldier, and a player is as much of a soldier, so far as orders 
are concerned, as a man in uniform is one. Obedience to 
orders is one of the highest essentials of a player's charac- 
ter." 

Fred Kohler, recently captain of the Princeton basket- 
ball team, says the same thing about amateur and school 
athletics. " To be a good player a man, beside mastering 
the game's technicalities, must be a gentleman at heart. The 
truly excellent player is the player who will fight fairly as 
hard as he can and smile good-naturedly whether he is 
winning or losing. After all, having the higher score is 
not the most important thing in true sport. The man who, 




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ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO DO 71 

while the game is in progress and after it is over, has both 
his self-respect and the respect of his team-mates and op- 
ponents is the one man that is always sure to win. His 
team may be outscored, but if he has outpointed and out- 
classed the other side in showing himself a true gentleman, 
on the scoreboard of his own conscience and that of other 
men's opinion he is an easy winner." 



IX 

WHAT GREAT ATHLETES SAY ABOUT 
WHAT TO AVOID 

WHAT ABOUT THE DANGER OF OVERSTRAIN IN 
HIGH SCHOOL YEARS? 

ALL athletic trainers are agreed that to begin hard train- 
ing too young is a mistake. Keene Fitzpatrick says 
that no boy should begin running distances until he is six- 
teen years old. " Many high school boys ruin any chance 
they might have had by beginning track work before they 
are developed to the necessary degree. When a man's heart 
is affected, his chances of ever becoming an athlete are gone. 
A good heart is the very foundation of prowess on the 
track or field." 

Dr. W. A. Lambeth, director of the department of phy- 
sical education in the University of Virginia, says: 

" To be sure, men can overdo their training and produce 
serious and perhaps permanent injury, but under modern 
supervision there is not much more danger from training 
than from going to church or digging potatoes. On the 
contrary, we find feeble-bodied men making for themselves 
a constitution fitting for some distinction in life." 

Dr. C. Ward Crampton, director of physical training of 
the New York City Board of Education, says: 

" Under the complete charge of a competent director of 
physical education athletics may be conducted so as to sat- 

72 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO AVOID 73 

isfy the competitive spirit of the student and in addition 
to serve the ends of physical education. This involves 
careful physical examination and medical certification, the 
limiting of schedules, the control of training, constant medi- 
cal supervision and the limitation of the kind of athletics 
used." 

Dr. George L. Meylan, professor of physical education in 
Columbia University, says: 

" I am firmly convinced that rational participation in 
athletics does not injure health or shorten life. This does 
not blind me to the fact that all athletics are not rational. 
There are evils and abuses in athletics. 

" I realize full well the dangers of competition in middle 
and long distance races by adolescent boys and untrained 
athletes, the dangers of overtraining and too frequent com- 
petitions and the dangers of allowing boys and young men 
to engage in athletics without careful medical examination 
and supervision." 

Dr. Albert H. Sharpe, athletic coach at Cornell Univer- 
sity, says: 

" The only rational criticism that can be directed against 
collegiate athletics is that some athletes are forced into oc- 
cupations in after life in which the environment is such that 
it is not conducive to a continuation of their usual exercise 
and they do not substitute some other form for it. It is 
easy enough to say that when a collegiate athletic star dies 
his death was caused by over-exertion, but it is much more 
difficult to prove it. 

" A more reasonable explanation, to my mind, is that 
the men who have done a lot of athletic work acquire the 
habit of ' never giving up/ and so when they finally do suc- 
cumb to any infection they are in a far more serious condi- 



74 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

tion than the average person, who not only succumbs 
quicker but 'gives in ' and therefore gets proper treatment 
earlier than the more virile type. In other words, the 
stronger the man, the more careless he is apt to be about 
what he considers minor ailments." 

WHAT DO YOU HONESTLY THINK ABOUT 
CIGARETTE-SMOKING? 

C. B. Fry, who was the world's greatest cricketer, said: 
" The boy who- smokes writes himself down an ass." 

Montague A. Holbein, the swimmer of the English chan- 
nel, said: " I feel certain that if lads understood the harm 
they were doing themselves they would keep from smoking. 
I attribute my being able to continue athletics longer than 
most men (being now over forty-two) to non-smoking and 
abstinence from alcoholic liquors." 

Lieut-Gen, Sir R. S. Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy 
Scouts, says : " The best scouts avoid the use of tobacco, 
because they consider it harms their eyesight and also their 
sense of smell." 

Chancellor David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford Uni- 
versity says of cigarette-smokers: "Such boys are like 
wormy apples; they drop before harvest time. The boy 
who begins smoking cigarettes before his fifteenth year 
never enters the life of the world." 

Keene Fitzpatrick, the Princeton trainer, says : " Stop 
smoking. The boys who use tobacco are heavily handi- 
capped. ' Oh, pshaw,' they will say, ' I only smoke a pipe, 
and I cut that out when I begin work.' Perhaps they do. 
Perhaps they let tobacco entirely alone for weeks before 
their training season begins and never touch it again until 
the last meet has been fought out. But nicotine will leave 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO AVOID 75 

its mark. If they could only know great athletes and know 
their habits it would be a lesson to them. Many are the 
men who have been rendered unfit for track, baseball and 
football, all on account of tobacco. The men who have 
been the strongest assets to the big university teams have 
let tobacco entirely alone." 

" I take it for granted," says Dr. A. C. Kraenzlein, " that 
any boy in athletics knows that tobacco and alcohol are to 
be tabooed. No matter how strong you may be, you can- 
not summon all your strength in the time of need if your 
throat and lungs are irritated with tobacco smoke or if your 
stomach and intestines are irritated by alcohol. Let to- 
bacco and drink alone. They are the biggest handicaps 
that an athlete can put on him." 

While connected with the Yale gymnasium Dr. J. W. 
Seaver made a comparative study of smokers and non- 
smokers. Of this investigation he says: "For purposes 
of comparison the men composing a class in Yale were di- 
vided into three groups. The first was made up of those 
who did not use tobacco in any form; the second consisted 
of those who had used it regularly for at least a year of 
the college course; the third group included the irregular 
users. During the period of undergraduate life, which is 
essentially three and one-half years, the first group grew in 
weight 10.4 per cent, more than the second, and 6.6 per 
cent, more than the third. In height the first group grew 
24 per cent, more than the second, and 11 per cent, more 
than the third; in girth of chest the first group grew 26.7 
per cent, more than the second, and 22 per cent, more than 
the third ; in capacity of lungs the first group gained yy per 
cent, more than the second, and 49.5 per cent, more than the 
third." Similar results were shown by Dr. Edward Hitch- 



?6 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

cock's investigation among the students of Amherst College. 
Not long ago the tobacco interests made large capital out 
of the report of Dr. George L. Meylan of Columbia Uni- 
versity, in effect that the smokers among the students there 
were slightly taller and heavier than the non-smokers. Re- 
cently Dr. Meylan made a complete report of his inquiries 
on the subject {Popular Science Monthly, August, 19 10) 
and his conclusions are all unfavorable to the use of to- 
bacco. The slight advantage in size on the part of the 
smokers is accounted for by the fact that they average eight 
months older than the non-smokers. That is, they are eight 
months behind the latter in their college work ; besides, they 
rank much lower in scholarship, as he also shows. 

WHAT IS A FAIR STATEMENT ABOUT THE EF- 
FECT OF ALCOHOL ON A STRONG MAN? 

Says Keene Fitzpatrick : " I have taken it for granted 
that none of the boys who are in high-school athletics use 
intoxicating liquors. If they do drink beer or any other 
alcoholic drink it is a question whether they will ever 
amount to much on the running track." 

Sven Hedin, the explorer of Asia, says: " In a caravan 
a drop of wine or brandy should not be found. To be de- 
pendent on these things is a curse, and is especially objec- 
tionable on a journey which demands great exertion." 

Dr. Emil Krapelin of the University of Munich tested 
some of his students both with and without alcohol as to 
their ability to add up figures. With the alcohol their 
speed gradually lessened, until it was decreased from twen- 
ty-five to forty per cent. Curiously enough, while they 
were using alcohol they thought they were doing better 
work. Regarding this self -deceptive effect of alcohol a 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO AVOID 77 

professor in the University of Cambridge says: "A 
man under the influence of small quantities of alcohol 
has no right to believe his senses. He cannot trust them 
to give him correct facts." Speaking of the decep- 
tiveness of " liquid courage," the North Carolinians say 
that their illicit whisky " will make a jack-rabbit spit in a 
bull-dog's face." But it doesn't really strengthen the 
rabbit. 

Three years before the Great War, Emperor William of 
Germany, who had so become convinced of the uselessness 
of alcoholics that he practised total abstinence, said to some 
naval cadets : " The next war will be decided by nerves. 
But these are undermined and endangered from youth up- 
wards by indulgence in alcohol. The nation which .takes 
the smallest quantities of alcohol will win the battles of the 
future." 

One million jobs in America, Dr. Edwin F. Bowers has 
recently written in the American Magazine, are closed to 
the young man who drinks. " If an employer is held to be 
liable for the death or injury of any of his employees, while 
at work, he is going to see that all removable causes of death 
or injury are eliminated." 

" Ed " Reulbach, secretary of the Baseball Players* Fra- 
ternity, says that the player who never drinks does not go 
stale as often as the man who drinks. " Our work calls 
for almost perfect physical condition and our energies are 
concentrated to the maximum for about two hours each day. 
Work, and work alone, will put the player in perfect con- 
dition, and give him the greatest strength. Now will al- 
cohol add anything or detract ? Many say alcohol can add 
no benefits, but will harm the player. * Mike ' Murphy told 
me that alcohol took from one to three years away from 



78 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

the player's life on the field. Are there any of us who can 
win that argument from Murphy ? " 

Connie Mack says : " I never bother with a young fel- 
low who uses booze. It slows him down." Christy 
Mathewson, the big pitcher, talking once to some boys, said : 
" I might lecture you boys about control being the big thing 
in life, but just now we are talking about pitching, and in 
that control is everything." 

Catcher Ira Thomas of the Philadelphia Athletics gives 
this testimony from his personal knowledge: 

"Of that famous ' Hundred-Thousand Dollar Infield ' 
which won the pennant for the Athletics and which critics 
say to be the greatest baseball combination in history, there 
is not a man that ever knew the taste of liquor and but one 
who has ever used tobacco. Connie Mack himself has 
never used either liquor or tobacco. He never utters a pro- 
fane word and no one else does in his presence. Men who 
are in baseball as a profession realize the value of a clean life 
in helping them to make the most of that profession. They 
realize, too, that the public demands that only gentlemen 
represent the clubs of the various cities. Baseball is a clean 
sport and winners in the game must be clean men." 

We must certainly go as far as the cautious Scotchman : 
" Na, na, I never knew onybody killed wi' drinkin', but I 
hae kenned some that deed in the trainin'." 

The only reason that I can find that is ever used by a 
youth in his senses for beginning to use alcohol is that he 
believes himself to be an exception. He thinks he can do, 
what the strongest pugilists and athletes and the brainiest 
scholars and writers have not done, beat old John Barley- 
corn. The Japanese have a bright way of telling what 
usually happens: 



ATHLETES SAY WHAT TO AVOID 79 

" First the man takes a drink, 
Then the drink takes a drink, 
Then the drink takes the man." 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 

"^^THEN you say of a fellow that " he is a good sport " 
** you are saying a number of fine things about him 
all in one phrase. 

In the first place you mean that he plays his game for all 
there is in it. Of this trait one of the most popular ex- 
amples in our day is " Hughie " Jennings, the manager of 
the Detroit baseball nine. He is a clean, vigorous, sober 
fellow who, in a ball game, has more ginger to the square 
inch than any other man who ever played baseball. To 
watch him, back of the first base coaching line, nervously 
pulling grass when the batsman comes up, leaping in the air 
at a hit, yelling all the time when a runner is in the field 
and condoling with a strike-out, is a show in itself. An 
amateur could tell what is going on without looking at the 
game by watching Jennings. He is the incarnation of all 
the feelings of the spectators, and they love him because 
they know he is playing the game, in victory or defeat, clear 
to the third " out " of the ninth inning. 

The other night he went down and talked to the Detroit 
newsboys. It is a difficult audience, as I well know from 
having faced it myself. Many a " prominent citizen " who 
has succeeded everywhere else has been glad to be helped off 
that platform after an inglorious finish. But Jennings made 
one of the neatest speeches, with baseball as his text, that I 

80 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 81 

ever heard of. In this talk of his he explained his theory 
of "Playing the Game." 

Of course he got a welcome ! " Ee-ya-a-ah-h-h ! " This 
from 400 husky throats. And then again. 

This shout, as every " fan " knows, is Detroit's battle 
cry. Jennings himself invented it in a moment of exulta- 
tion, and now everybody uses it. 

" Play ball ! " shouted Jennings, raising a hand above 
his head in an attempt to regain order. In a moment quiet 
reigned. 

" I am more than pleased to see so many faces on the 
batting list," began the speaker. " You are the boys who 
make this game of life worth playing. 

" When you are called on, pick your bat carefully and 
then face the pitcher with the mental resolve that you're 
going to make a hit. 

" If you find it easy to reach first, don't think it's going 
to be so easy to get second. Watch the ball every minute 
and don't take chances when you know you can be put out. 
In the game of life you are on the bases most of the time. 
Sometimes they catch you at the home plate. If they do, 
make up your mind that they won't the next time. 

" And don't kick if you're an outfielder. Things may be 
faster on the infield, but from your position you have just 
the same chances in the game. You go to bat like the rest. 
The good pitcher is the one who delivers the goods. You 
can all be pitchers in a way, that is, you can always throw 
straight. 

" Never think a game is lost until it's over, and then you 
know you'll play another later. I remember a game I was 
playing in when we reached the last half of the ninth in- 
ning with a score of 1 to 1. Then a fellow on the other 



82 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

team slammed out a dandy. Away over the head of the 
left fielder it went, and for a moment it seemed as if it 
would clear the fence. But it didn't; it actually stuck 
in a knot-hole. Our left fielder was a fellow who 
thought quick. In a moment he was at the fence and had 
the ball. He shot it to the shortstop and the latter sent it 
singing into the mitt of the catcher. Every man of that 
trio was a player. The catcher pinned the runner just as 
he was sliding for home plate. The umpire called, ' You're 
out,' and the left fielder was the hero of the day. 

" I guess I've said all I can to-night, so I'll call the game 
on account of darkness." 

A second quality of sportsmanlikeness is, Obeying the 
Rules of the Game. 

We generally believe in this. The player who would yell 
at his opponent in tennis when he was serving, who would 
habitually play-off side in hockey or who would move his 
golf -ball ever so gently, we would regard as a poor sports- 
man. But in football, to outwit the umpire, to trip or hold 
a player, or even to disable the strong man on the opposite 
team, these unworthy tricks are excused, applauded, and 
even taught by coaches. They are practices that even a 
respectable gambler would scorn. " The same principle/' 
says Professor C. A. Stewart of Idaho University, " is at 
the bottom of ' cutting the bases ' in baseball. A man 
knows when he has failed to touch a base, yet time after 
time we see a runner cut wide of a base, and his opponents 
protest in vain, because the umpire has not seen the play. 
Meanwhile the man who by violation of a rule has short- 
ened the distance he has had to run, grins complacently be- 
cause he ' got away with it,' and his college mates among 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 83 

the spectators applaud him as heartily as if he had scored 
by skill instead of trickery." 

The worst of it is that, while we stand for this when it is 
done by our own team, we are indignant if it is practiced by 
our opponents. Dr. Stewart truly says : " At every high 
intercollegiate contest you will hear among the spectators 
denunciation of the * dirty play ' of the visiting team, when 
similar play by members of the home team has passed un- 
condemned, or mayhap has been praised in a gleeful, ' Did 
you see Jack " get " that fellow ? He's a slick one.' " 

This sort of thing is taking much of the pleasure out of 
school sport. If an honorable spirit of sportsmanship ruled 
college athletics, why need there be severe penalties threat- 
ened for coaching from the side-lines in football, and 
special precautions exercised by the officials to detect it? 
Should not merely forbidding it be sufficient ? Why should 
it be necessary in basketball to provide that after four per- 
sonal fouls a player must be removed from the game? 
These penalties interrupt the game, cause hard feelings 
among both players and spectators, and take out of these 
contests the clean joy of seeing brave victories cleanly won. 

They have their effect in after-life. The sports of gen- 
tlemen to-day are often contaminated by attempts at deceit 
College men are mistrusted by business men because they 
, have been educated in trickery. Even the Republic is en- 
dangered by this spirit of " Get it at any price," for as the 
principal of Phillips Andover says : " The real menace lies 
not in the ignorant and uneducated member of society, but 
in the intelligent and clever crook." 

To play fair does not mean to play like a mollycoddle. 
Colonel Roosevelt put this clearly to the Hill School boys 



84 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

when he said : " I have always striven to make the men 
who were responsible for athletics in any school or in any 
college ,try to drill it into the head of every member of the 
school or college team that the man who sought to win by 
foul play was a disgrace to the school or college ; and that 
on the other hand, if the man did not play as if he had a 
spare neck in his pocket, he was mighty little use and was 
not entitled to much respect. 

" I want to see the same attitude of all of you toward life 
when you leave school, when you leave college, to go out 
into the world." 

Who is entitled to fair play? Our friends only, some 
of us seem to say. " Dad " Elliott, the ex-football star, 
quotes the average college student as saying: 

" I'm not a citizen of this town ; I am a student. That 
was simply a college prank. You ought to wink at it." 

" I would have paid that as soon as I had money. Why 
couldn't that storekeeper give me credit ? " 

" I have a right to crib when the instructor is in the room. 
It's his business to catch me. Of course I wouldn't cheat 
in business, but you don't call this cheating." 

It is this view that we are exceptions and have a right to 
cheat any one who is not a friend that makes the mischief 
with school and college morals. What if your chance for a 
business position later were to depend upon your college 
record for honor? Yet that is not the real question. To 
live on fair terms with one's fellows may or may not be a 
real test of honor, but unless a man lives on fair terms with 
himself he can hardly wish to look himself in the face. 

" But it is so hard." A senator was once complaining to 
Father Taylor, the famous sailor preacher, in regard to po- 
litical temptations : " You could have no idea of the out- 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 85 

side pressure, Father Taylor." " Outside pressure, non- 
sense ! " shouted the old hero. " Where were your inside 
braces? " 

Another quality of sportsmanlikeness is, Loyalty to Ones 
Leader. 

The influence of college politics upon athletics is very 
strong in certain American universities. Combinations are 
made by which men of political influence are put on the 
teams who otherwise would not be seriously considered. 
The conditions at Cornell University not long ago became 
serious in this respect. When Al Sharpe was elected coach, 
over a favorite that the team demanded, he recognized at 
once that his own authority, the discipline of the team, and 
future success in athletics required that he take a deter- 
mined stand. He announced that he was coach for the 
university and not for any clique, and that those who were 
willing to play with that principle in mind were going to 
have an equal chance to try. The next day the varsity 
eleven did not appear on the field. Sharpe played the first 
games of the season practically with a set of " scrubs," and 
most of the games were lost. This result so stirred the 
sentiment of the students that before the season was over 
the regular men could not resist it, and they reentered the 
game. The next fall Cornell made a consistent and credit- 
able record, and now they are in the championship class. 
Best of all, the team is fairly representative of the uni- 
versity. . 

In another college not long ago the best half-back on the 
team, when told to " fall on the ball " in a certain fashion, 
persistently did otherwise. When asked by the coach why 
he did not execute the movement properly, he answered 
sullenly that he did not want to. The coach commanded 



86 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

him to leave the field. The other players were dum- 
founded. The squad was small that year and they had 
expected to build their game largely around this star player. 
The coach explained that football is a mass game, not an 
individual game, that the season was young and the team 
weak and that no man could be so valuable as to be indis- 
pensable if he would not show team spirt. The men grad- 
ually saw the point and they played a successful season 
without the " grand-stand " player. 

In the Middle West the biggest " prep " school player for 
the past few years has been a Detroit quarter-back. Detroit 
Central High School has strict rules about the maintain- 
ance of scholarship by those who represent the school on its 
teams. There is also the warmest personal interest taken 
by the faculty in the school games. It was hard for this 
young boy to withstand the adulation heaped upon him. 
He became careless and lazy. His standing fell so low that 
he was ruled out of the basketball team last winter. The 
indignation of the school availed nothing. The lad found 
himself no longer a hero. Gradually he became penitent. 
He asked what he could do to retrieve himself. The teacher 
who had "flunked" him in mathematics was an enthusiast 
for football and was deeply interested in this young stu- 
dent's case. She tutored him patiently and without recom- 
pense. As a consequence he made up his work and got 
back into the game again. 

Still another quality of sportsmanlikeness is, Loyalty to 
One's Team. 

You have probably noticed that the difference between 
the play of grammar-school and high-school boys is that the 
former have no idea of team-play. It is each player for 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 87 

himself ; each strives to get all the home-runs, all the goals, 
whether the team wins or not. But the real sportsman plays 
for his team, whether he is called upon to " sacrifice " in 
baseball or in football to be the mattress at the bottom of 
the pile. 

I saw a little instance of this the other day in a high- 
school boy. He was captain of the eleven at school and 
had taken an important assignment at a Y. M. C. A. Boys' 
Conference. In the midst of these duties his father sud- 
denly died. This is the way one of his schoolmates, who 
had played on the team with him for two years, described 
what followed: 

" The day before Thanksgiving his father met with a 
fatal accident which broke his back and crushed his chest. 

In the father's conscious moments he begged of S to 

go play the game. As we were in the dressing room just 

before the game, in came S . We fellows, who were 

to play the last game of our high school career, were de- 
lighted but could hardly understand how a fellow might 
have such nerve to play under the circumstances and our 
estimation of him arose about 1,000 per cent, because of his 
loyalty to the school and team. He was of course under a 
terrific strain but played a splendid game. The heart of 
every fellow was touched, as S cried while calling sig- 
nals during the last quarter. He went to the Boys' Confer- 
ence the day after his father died and came back home to 
the funeral. 

" Such a spirit of service as has been shown by him 
undoubtedly has an influence upon other fellows and I be- 
lieve that there is a great future for him." 

This is why it has always seemed to me that gambling is 



88 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

one of the unsportsmanlike habits. In the excitement of its 
uncertainty it is hard to remember its essential "yellow- 
ness." 

In one view gambling on a game is " supporting the 
team," but in a fairer light it is letting some other fellow 
pay your own honest debts. It is taking money from a 
friend without working for it. It is taking advantage of 
his friendship to steal from a friend. 

Instead of supporting the team, gambling does more than 
any other one habit to spoil a good team, because it takes 
to the bleachers and behind them fellows who ought to be 
out playing " scrub," it encourages dirty play to win, and 
it takes the heart out of a player to think that what his 
chums care for is not the athletic glory of the college but 
their own miserable winnings. 

Some of the other " yellow " things about betting are : 

It is silly recklessness. 

It is a cocky mood of foolish pride. 

When you risk money, or money's worth, you are risk- 
ing the coined accumulation of the labor of yourself, or of 
some one else. Then you are risking yourself, you are put- 
ting yourself up to any one who will bet on you. Or, if 
not that, then you are putting up your honest father for 
anybody who will rob him. 

One more quality of sportsmanlikeness, and the hardest 
of all, is to Be a Good Loser. 

Some words of praise have been spoken of Colonel 
Roosevelt's fine physical ideals, but it must be confessed 
that he is not a good sportsman. The remark sounds 
strange, when so many think of him as one of the most 
famous shooters of big game in the world. But a man 
may be a good hunter and yet not be a good sportsman. 



SPORTSMANLIKENESS 89 

The highest quality of a sportsman is that he is a good 
loser, and " T. R." is not that. If any one ever heard him 
say a good word about a successor or a rival, let him make 
himself visible by holding up both of his hands. If he was 
ever known to blame himself for a failure he must have 
done it when he was saying his prayers, alone. 

" I heard Walter Travis say he had never beaten a well 
man at golf." 

That's the way with many defeated competitors — a lame 
back, a sore arm, a cinder in the eye, too short or too long 
a club, anything except the real reason, which was a trifle 
too little skill to win. 

The war news the other day carried the death of an op- 
posite type of sportsman. Captain Leslie Cheape, of the 
English army, whose hard riding and fine generalship on 
the polo field thrilled tens of thousands of American admir- 
ers, was generally a winner at his favorite game, but when 
he did lose he lost like a gentleman. 

So when a sporting editor asked him at the close of a 
great international match why his team had lost, Captain 
Cheape replied : " We didn't play well enough to win." 

That was a great speech that Owen Johnson reports in 
" Stover at Yale," made by the coach of coaches after a 
lost football game: 

" Now, boys, the game is over. We've lost. It's our 
turn; we've got to stand it. One thing I want you to re- 
member when you go out of here. Yale teams take their 
medicine. Do you understand? Yale teams take their 
medicine! No talking, no reasoning, no explanations, no 
excuses, and no criticism! The thing's over and done. 
We'll start in on next year; and next year nothing under 
the sun's going to stop us ! A great Princeton team licked 



9 o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

you well — that's all. You deserved to score. You didn't. 
Hard luck. But those who saw you try for it won't forget 
it! No talk, now, about what might have happened; no 
talk about what you're going to do. Shut up! Remem- 
ber — grin and take your medicine." 



XI 
THE OPEN ROAD 

NOBODY can live an exultant life who does not live 
out-of-doors. One may be very good, very useful, 
very contented, but to be so joyous that people turn around 
to envy you when you pass, you must be " lord of the windy 
wood and prince of the winding road." One who will do 
this has the spirit of Perpetual Spring. Such an one knows 
that 

" The Bells of Youth are ringing in the gateways of the South : 
The bannerets of green are now unfurled: 
Spring has risen with a laugh, a wild-rose in her mouth, 
And is singing, singing, singing thro* the world." 

" A boy," says Dr. C. W. Votaw, " needs room and 
range. He needs the tonic of the hills, the woods and 
streams. He needs to walk under the great sky, and com- 
mune with the stars. He needs to place himself where na- 
ture can speak to him. He ought to be toughened by sun 
and wind, rain and cold. He should fish, swim, row and 
sail, roam the woods and the waters, get plenty of vigorous 
action, have interesting, healthful things to think about." 

And a girl needs the out-of-doors even more. The tend- 
ency of girls, when they reach high-school years, is to leave 
off suddenly the active games they used to play with other 
girls and boys and to retire to the bleachers to watch the 
boys play. Woman's work in the world is more fascinating 

91 



92 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

than man's, because it is more varied, but often it does not 
seem so because she does it in a narrow, lonesome, kitchen- 
to-chamber sort of way. Let a girl learn to cook, can, 
clean, and sleep, as the primitive women did, under the sun 
and stars, amongst other women, and with singing, and all 
her housework will seem beautiful. This is the purpose 
of that splendid new organization for girls that is growing 
up everywhere about us. " To show that the common 
things of daily life are the chief means of beauty, romance 
and adventure is the purpose of the Camp Fire Girls." 

I wish that all our families could live as has lived the 
family of Dr. and Mrs. Gulick, the founders of the Camp 
Fire Girls. The first summer they were married, before 
their first child was born, they began to camp out, and Mrs. 
Gulick spent the summer sitting " by the water edge for 
hours, singing to the guitar and dreaming of the life that 
was to be." For nearly thirty consecutive summers since 
then they and their children and the children of others have 
lived in the open in the summer, learning the ways of boats 
and the water, cooking outdoors and choosing new places 
each week for supper, singing and working and playing to- 
gether. " Because we believed that life was beautiful," 
says Mrs Gulick, " we have tried to give a beautiful prep- 
aration for it." 

It doesn't make so much difference how long you live as 
how much you live. " Make it the passion of my life to be 
all life, to have in me no death and no darkness " was the 
prayer of some one unknown. To be all alive is a great 
secret. And the best way to find it is 

" To take the clean, wild gifts of earth and heaven, 
The love of stars at night, the light of fire, 
The joy of song, the mystery of desire, 




Why Dartmouth is a Fine Winter College. 



THE OPEN ROAD 93 

And dare the freedom of a wild new birth 
Into the silent, great, glad joys of earth." 

ADVENTURE 

We step outdoors to get adventure. 

To enjoy adventure it is not needful that it be distant. 
The only essential is the spirit in which one goes. You re- 
member that Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm insisted that 
"it wa journey when you take a nightgown." Emerson 
reminds us that if we only hire a cab to ride through our 
familiar home-town it at once seems like a strange city. 
And his friend Thoreau urged that even when we take a 
short walk, go sauntering, " we should go forth in the 
spirit of undying adventure, never to return — prepared to 
send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our deso- 
late kingdoms." 

It does not require unusual circumstances to make ad- 
venture. Walt Whitman sang: 

" In things best known to you, finding the best, or as good as the 

best, 
In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest ; 
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place, but this place — not 

for another hour, but for this hour; 
Man in the first you see or touch — always in friend, brother, nighest 

neighbor — Woman in mother, lover, wife." 

A. G. Gardiner says that " Thoreau, by his pond at Wal- 
den, or paddling up the Concord, had more adventures than 
Stanley had on the Congo, more adventures than Stanley 
could have." 

Thoreau thought a common thing was not less beautiful 
because it was common, but rather otherwise. Once after 
seeing a wonderful sunset, he spoke of it as a miracle, but 



94 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

added : " When we reflected that it would happen forever 
and ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and re- 
assure the latest child that walked there, it was more glori- 
ous still." And E. P. Powell says of daybreak: "Go to 
sleep at eight o'clock and get up with the robins. Never 
miss the bird orchestra at daylight. Every one wonders, 
and is carried out of himself when for the first time he dis- 
covers morning." 

Did you ever go to walk with a naturalist? It is as if 
you were walking with a man in a magic world among 
sights and sounds that you could not catch. " Where can 
anybody find Indian arrow-heads? " a boy once asked Thor- 
eau. " Here," said Henry, swiftly bending down and pick- 
ing one up. After reading Dr. Kane's book of Arctic ex- 
plorations Thoreau said that most of the phenomena men- 
tioned there he himself had seen about Concord, Massa- 
chusetts. 

Dr. James M. Ludlow was once walking with William 
Hamilton Gibson, the artist, who was such a close observer 
of nature that he envied him, and he said : " Gibson, you 
say there is beauty in everything — except some men. 
Now what is there beautiful within a square rod of us? " 

The road was dusty and apparently there was not much 
in sight but some coarse weeds. Instantly Gibson replied : 
" Shall I show you the king and queen of the bug world, 
robed in purple and crowned with gold ? Come, Solomon ! 
Come, Sheba ! " He reached over to a curled leaf and in 
his open palm displayed two magnificent beetles — heads 
glowing in golden yellow, and bodies mantled with gor- 
geously enameled purple wings. 

Do you know what it means to be such a discoverer? 

G. B. Affleck, in Physical Training, tells how certain 



THE OPEN ROAD - 95 

night sounds were a puzzle to a group of boys and their 
leader in a camp in northern Minnesota. " Finally, one 
moist, warm night, Ned, after stealthily approaching the 
sound, satisfied himself of its locality in a certain tree and 
in the morning was rewarded by the discovery of the 
* toad ' camped on a branch near the source whence the 
sound had issued. Replacing the frog so that the coarse 
tubercle of its back corresponded to the bark, Ned enjoyed 
a merited reward at the expense of his tent-mates who, 
though often ' hot/ required some minutes to find the hid- 
den treasure. Then came the wonder of the stick toes and 
fingers, the feeding with flies, and the result was — a new 
pet for the tent. 

" Another group became so fascinated with the study of 
the food of fish that they begged the ' privilege ' of cleaning 
the catch of each returning party. Proud was that lad who 
incidentally located the heart of a pickerel; because of his 
school knowledge of physiology, he could not be convinced 
that the fish breathed without lungs till he had spent many 
hours in the vain endeavor to locate said organs." 

THE LOVE OF TREES 

"What do I care for nature study? Just microscopes 
and herbariums and test tubes and all sorts of tiny putter- 
ings that tire your eyes and your fingers. Give me some- 
thing big." 

It was Edwin Marston of our high school who spoke 
thus impatiently. 

My answer was : " Why not try tree-study ? " 

As he turned to me in surprise I went on somewhat as 
follows : 

Trees seem to me the nearest like human companions of 



96 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

anything that grows. And they are certainly big enough, 
so big that there is no chance for puttering with them. I 
am not wise about them myself, but it is just because one 
doesn't have to know much that is scientific in order to en- 
joy them that I never lose their fascination. 

Take the way they grow. Some of them, like the oak, 
with their sturdy roots and their knotted elbows give one 
such a sense of enduring strength. Others, like the red 
cedar, have such an air of always having had a hard time, 
against storms and winds, and yet seem so full of sinewy 
strength. The sycamore in my grounds that is twenty 
feet around lays its round roots along the grass like a great, 
protecting arm, but the delicate elm is more like a huge 
green bouquet and the horse chestnut stands like a trellis 
for its pyramids of blossoms and its dark foliage. The 
birch always seems the maiden of trees. One speaks of 
" her silver body under a veil, where she stands knee-deep 
in the brake " and another compares her to a lost princess 
about to run away from a dark host of pines. 

The details of trees are so beautiful. The sycamore 
lifts its trunk in winter like a round shaft of mottled ivory. 
The small leaves of the beech in fall hang about the trunk 
like a filagree of copper. The buds of the horse chestnut 
look like " countless fairy lamps of amber." The magnolia 
blossoms appear to be lotuses that have got caught in the 
branches of a tree. The poplar is such a modest but not- 
able tree that even if there is but one in the landscape it 
cannot help being seen, and its upturned leaves in the breeze 
flow away from the branches like a stream. 

The sounds of trees are so different that some one has 
suggested planting them for a "sound garden" as men 
plant flowers for the sight. The oaks gossip with their 



THE OPEN ROAD 97 

leaves, but the live-oaks, Lanier thought, "pray a myriad 
prayer." The beeches rustle like court ladies; the catalpas 
rattle like castanets ; " the locusts clash their pods in unison 
with the beating of invisible drums,'' but the pines seem to 
have a sound for every mood, and are ready either to croon 
babies to sleep or to howl with our struggles or to sigh 
over our death-beds. 

It is very pretty to trace out the associations that go 
with trees. One feels as if it were the Sabbath when he 
stands under a cedar. Another thinks Our Lady ought 
always to be painted under the shadow of white birches. 
The oak goes with navies and storms and battles at sea, 
with lordly parks and Robin Hood and Charles the First, 
with manorial halls and all that is stately in history and 
in life. The cedar is a sad, humorous Don Quixote; the 
beech has been called " a beautiful princess that never grows 
old." The osier makes cradles, the elm coffins and the yew 
watches over the dead. The pine is the tree to last beside 
an old house, but the maple, with its robins, is the tree to 
live with every day. 

Somepne some day will collect all the human stories that 
go with trees. They will mention big burly Falstaff's mis- 
chance under the oak. They will remember that dryads 
lived in oaks, that the hawthorn grew in Merlin's grove of 
Broceliande, and that the willow makes soft and the apple 
fragrant the restful valley of Avalon. 

It seems to me, I told Edwin, that there is a lot of de- 
lightful tree study that can be done even before one collects 
their leaves, learns the difference in their bark or carves his 
initials on beeches. 



98 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 
Listen to Bliss Carman : 

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD 

" Now the joys of the road are chiefly these : 
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees ; 

A shadowy highway cool and brown, 
Alluring up and enticing down ; 

The outward eye, the quiet will, 

And the striding heart from hill to hill ; 

An open hand, an easy shoe, 

And a hope to make the day go through ; 

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, 
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me." 

And let our walk together end with the words of Jean 
Brooke Burt: 

" These are the things I hold divine ; . . . 
The welcome smile on neighbors' faces, 
Cool, wide hills and open places, 
Rose-red dawns and a mate to share 
With comrade soul my gypsy fare, 
A waiting fire when the twilight ends, 
A gallant heart and the voice of friends." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE OPEN ROAD 

Some Things to See 

i. How many sunrises will you see this month? How many 
sunsets ? 

2. Where does the mother rabbit make her nest ? 

3. What makes the fields white at night in hot weather ? 

4. What happens to snails when they die? 



THE OPEN ROAD 99 

5. Do things have color at night ? 

6. Why do stars twinkle? 

Some Things to Hear 

1. How many sounds can you hear to-morrow morning on your 
porch before breakfast ? 

2. Listen in the evening, in the same place, to the crickets and 
frogs, and see if you can remember to hear them even while you are 
talking. 

3. Is there any difference in sound between the wind in the pines 
and the rain on the roof? Do you notice the difference between 
the rain as it falls on a shingled, a slated, and a tinned roof? 

Some Things to Feel 

1. The touch of gentle rain in your face. 

2. A bed of cool, soft moss in the woods when you are barefoot. 

3. By their response to your touch, how the different farm animals 
feel toward you. 

4. The different bites of fish, trout and pickerel, on your line. 

Some Things to Taste 

1. Vegetables. How many can you distinguish with your eyes 
shut? 

2. Water. Which is more refreshing, cool water from the spring 
or ice-water? Which is the better for you to drink? 

3. Butter. Do you know by the taste when the butter is good ? 

Some Things to Smell 

1. The pine woods. 

2. A distant buckwheat field in bloom. 

3. A garden full of flowers at night. 

4. Clean rooms at home. 

5. Good cooking. 

The Twelve Secrets of the Woods 
These are offered by Ernest Thompson-Seton, of the Woodcraft 
League : 

Do you know the twelve secrets of the woods ? 



ioo THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Do you know the umbrella that stands up spread to show that 
there is a restaurant in the cellar? 

Do you know the " manna-food " that grows on the rocks, sum- 
mer and winter, and holds up its hands in the Indian sign of " inno- 
cence," so all who need may know how good it is ? 

Do you know the vine that climbs above the sedge to whisper on 
the wind, " There are cocoanuts in my basements? " 

Can you tell why the rabbit puts its hind-feet down ahead of its 
front ones as he runs? 

Can you tell why the squirrel buries every other nut and who it 
was that planted those shag-barks all along the fence ? 

Can you tell what the woodchuck does in mid-winter and on 
what day? 

Have you learned to know the pale villain of the open woods — 
the deadly amanita, for whose fearful poison no remedy is known? 

Have you proved the Balsam Fir in all its fourfold gifts — as 
Christmas Tree, as healing balm, as consecrated bed, as wood of 
friction fire? 

Can you read the story on the Council Robe? 

Have you tasted the bread of wisdom, the treasure that cures much 
ignorance, that is buried in the aisle of Jack-o-Pulpit's Church? 

Can you tell what walked around your tent on the thirtieth night 
on your camp-out? 

Then are you wise. You have learned the twelve secrets of the 
woods. 



XII 

WOOD-SMOKE AT TWILIGHT 

" Who hath smelt wood-smoke at twilight ? Who hath heard the 
birch-log burning? 
Who is quick to read the noises of the night ? 
Let him follow with the others, for the young men's feet are 
turning 
To the camps of proved desire and known delight ! " 

SO sings Rudyard Kipling, and so sing I. Seven dif- 
ferent summers have I camped out with boys, so I may 
be supposed to know some of the joys of outdoor living. 

The fact that I never went camping until I had sons of 
my own big enough to go along explains why the camp-fire 
was to me a fresh and delightful discovery. 

The first thing I learned was that it does not take money 
or equipment to have fun camping. I once took a party 
out for nine days for two dollars apiece, and we had twenty- 
five cents left in the treasury when we started home. I 
remember one time there were twenty-six of us, in two 
tents. We were to stay a week and there were only six 
cot-beds. I couldn't see how we were going to work out 
the use of those cots, mathematically. But I didn't need 
to. Only two of the beds were asked for. One was used 
by the writer, and the other by a boy who had never been 
away from home before — and I guess has never been away 
since. The rest slept on hay spread on the ground, wrapped 
up in blankets, and they were so close together that when- 

IOI 



102 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

ever anybody wanted to turn over, everybody had to. And 
one lad was so anxious to be a Spartan that he wrapped up 
a loaf of bread inside a rubber boot for a pillow, and slept 
over the root of a tree. 

Sometimes there is difficulty about getting the work done, 
but I learned how to solve even that. I always divide the 
crowd into squads on the first day. One squad waits on 
the table and washes the dishes, another looks after the 
grounds, the boats and the bathing, and a third goes after 
provisions. Each squad serves two days, one day to learn 
how and another to show off. Nobody likes to wash dishes, 
so nobody has it to do for more than two days. Every- 
body likes to take care of the boats, but nobody is allowed 
to do it more than his share of the time. I always choose 
a reliable boy to act as treasurer for the whole time, and 
he does nothing else. I, myself, always cook, and when I 
tell you that the only thing I knew how to prepare when I 
started was grape-nuts, you can realize that even an amateur 
can learn. 

I used to have trouble between the older and the younger 
boys, for I usually had both kinds along. The small boys 
tended to be " fresh " and the large ones impatient. It was 
not until my last camp that I found out how to deal with 
the difficulty. I appointed each older boy the guardian of 
a young one. I told the younger that his remaining with 
the camp would depend on his being able to satisfy his 
guardian with his conduct, and I told the older that he had 
authority to send the younger home. The way it worked 
was that each guardian was so desirous to show that he 
could discipline his boy, and each younger one was so anx- 
ious to please his guardian, that every one behaved admir- 
ably. Indeed there grew up a real brotherly affection be- 



WOOD-SMOKE AT TWILIGHT 103 

tween each pair. I recall one case where a guardian was 
detected getting up in the midst of a chilly night and putting 
his blanket over his charge, while he himself went out and 
tried to keep warm sitting by the camp-fire. 

People often ask what boys and girls do at camp, and I 
for one have always found it hard to answer. Many camp 
leaders have a program, but as for myself, I have found that 
getting and eating meals, going in swimming, playing base- 
ball and rambling in the woods seem to take up about all 
the time, until the camp-fire in the evening. Nature's own 
great playground is inexhaustible. To be on the water and 
in the water, to dig in the sand, to find strange things in 
the woods and by the roadside, to pick berries, to sit under 
the stars and the moon and by the fire — these fill the day 
and the evening, and these are enough. 

The best thing about a camp is the camp-fire, and I have 
never seen a day in summer that was so warm that a camp- 
fire was not welcome and anticipated at evening. " There 
is," says William C. Gray in his " Camp-Fire Musings," " an 
invisible, softly stepping delight in the camp-fire which 
escapes analysis. Enumerate all its charms, and still there 
is something not in your catalogue — the paths of delight 
which it cuts through the darkness, the elfish forms wind- 
ing and twisting their faces in the glowing, ash-veiled em- 
bers, the black dragons' heads with red eyes and jaws grin- 
ning to show their fiery teeth, while around the pines 
whisper to the silence and the sentinel trees seem to ad- 
vance and retire." Now and again they seem to " leave 
their places and come out of the dark to join our company. 
They say not a word, yet not even to a man is given such a 
variety of character and so much of mystery. We catch 
the thought of that white and stately birch — calmness, 



104 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

purity and dignity; and so of the mighty pine, somber and 
lofty. This rustling maple is an old friend — we under- 
stand him. He talks about sweetness, shade and beauty — 
familiar topics." 

There is something that comes from the songs, the stunts 
and the stories about even a week's fire that seems to bind a 
group of youths together, so that ever after they are com- 
rades, and whenever they strike hands it is with a grip like 
that of members of some college fraternity. 

I often think that camp-life is a prophecy of that " in- 
stitution of the dear love of comrades " that Walt Whit- 
man looked forward to. I remember the good lesson in 
this respect that I learned at my first camp. As I have in- 
timated, I had never practised camping when a boy. I had 
never been nearer learning to swim than a bath-tub. So 
when I decided that I would take a crowd of boys to camp, 
I had to depend upon the wisdom of others. I bought a 
Y. M. C. A. handbook on the subject, and I did whatever 
the book said. 1 set up the tent by page n, and dug the 
trench around it by page 12, and built the fire according to 
the directions at the bottom of page 26. And so on. Fi- 
nally I read that after we had set up our tent and dug our 
trench and built our fire and had supper and washed dishes, 
we would go into the tent for the night, and then we ought 
to have family prayers. " Very good," said I. " This is 
a church camp, and we want the religious influence to be 
unmistakable." So we did set up the tent and dug the 
trench and built the fire, and we did have supper, and we 
did wash dishes — that is, I think we did that time — and 
by and by we were really in the tent. Then I was just 
drawing out my pocket Testament and moistening my lips 
to suggest the devotional exercises, when something hap- 



WOOD-SMOKE AT TWILIGHT 105 

pened that was not set down in the book. Somebody threw 
a shoe at the lantern and put the light out. And there was 
I in the dark, with my handbook useless, and not knowing 
what to do. 

There was a scene of considerable confusion for an hour 
or so (I have since learned that it is wiser to postpone 
prayers until the second night). At length we lay down 
and, as I supposed, were all asleep except myself. And 
there I lay wondering why it was that I had failed in this 
which seemed the most important matter of all. By and by 
one boy, the most irrepressible of the lot, who had insisted 
on sleeping next to me, rose on his elbow and in a loud stage 
whisper spoke to the boy who was on my other side, " Say, 
Sid, have you said your prayers? I'll bet I'm the only 
fellow in this bunch who has said his prayers." " No, you 
ain't, I said mine an hour ago." " Well, Bill, I'll bet you 
haven't." So he kicked up Bill who was asleep at the foot 
of the tent. Bill had never slept away from home before, 
and the tone in which he answered suggested homesick- 
ness, but his reply was satisfactory. He insisted on waking 
up each man in the tent, and they all made the same re- 
sponse. They had all said their prayers, though only the 
good Lord knows when or how. And as I watched them 
the following week, and noticed how they bore each other's 
burdens and so fulfilled the law of Christ, I decided that I 
didn't need to worry about the religious influence of that 
camp. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CAMPING 

Camp Essentials 
The essentials to a good camp, as enumerated by Mr. E. M. Robin- 
son, International Secretary of the Y. M. C. A. for Boys' Work, are 
as follows : 



106 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

i. Good water for drinking, cooking, and washing. 

2. A body of water for fishing, boating, swimming, bathing, and 
going about. 

3. A wooded tract for roaming, hunting, for shade, for wood 
construction. 

4. An open field for games and sun drying. 

5. Sleeping accommodations : tents, a log cabin, deserted house, 
under a boat. 

6. Good drainage for tents, for sanitary purposes. 

7. Good outlook, scenery. 

8. Seclusion which allows a free dress and manner of living. 

9. An agreeable personnel. 

10. Discipline, allotment of labor and privilege, freedom. 

11. Good climatic conditions. 

12. Camp-fire. 

13. Abundance of good food. 

14. Suitable clothing to rough it and be comfortable. 

15. Communication with civilization. 

16. Being away from home and home habits. 

17. Abundant activity and great quantities of rest. 

18. New things of interest to claim the attention. 

What to Take to Camp 
The following suggestions, for girls and for boys, are furnished 
by the Philadelphia Playgrounds Association. 

What Each Girl Should Bring 



1 

2 

3 

4 

5- 

6. 

7- 

8. 

9 

10 



LIST OF NECESSITIES 

Usual outdoor clothing. 

Two pairs of full-size woolen blankets. 

One pillow. 

Towels. 

Two sheets. 

One pillow-case. 

Toilet articles, mirror. 

Toilet soap. 

One pair substantial shoes. 

One pair rubbers. 



WOOD-SMOKE AT TWILIGHT 107 

11. Short skirt or bloomers. 

12. One waterproof coat or cape. 

13. One sweater or jacket. 

14. Outing hat or cap. 

15. Several middy blouses. 

DESIRABLE ADDITIONS 

i. Bathing suit. 

2. Tennis shoes. 

3. Tennis racket. 

4. Fishing tackle. 

5. Camera. 

6. Hammock. 

7. Book or magazine. 

8. Any musical instrument, with music. 

9. Sewing or fancy-work. 

10. Any other things which may add to the interest or enjoyment 

of the camp should be included. 
It is recommended that no jewelry be brought. 

(The popular and sensible camp costume is middy blouse and 
bloomers.) 

What Each Boy, Should Bring 

LIST OF NECESSITIES 

1. Two heavy blankets. 

2. A sweater or heavy coat. 

3. An extra suit of old clothes for change in case you are caught 

in the rain. 

4. An old overcoat or raincoat. 

5. Shoes that have good soles, and a pair of rubbers. 

6. A comb and brush. 

7. A small mirror. 

8. A toothbrush. 

9. Towels and soap. 



DESIRABLE ADDITIONS 



i. Tennis shoes. 

2. Baseball bat. 

3. Baseball glove. 



108 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

4. Fishing tackle. 

5. Bathing suit or swimming suit (full suit). 

6. Book or magazine. 

7. Any musical instrument, with music. 

The Camp Site 
All experienced campers agree in the main on what an ideal site 
for a summer camp for boys is. Therefore, Richardson and 
Loomis say, we will assume that the Scoutmaster has done his best 
to secure a place that meets all the following conditions: 

1. High, well drained land with loose, sandy subsoils, at least 
ten feet above rock or hard-pan. 

2. Abundant supply of clear, pure drinking water either from 
running spring or artesian well near by. 

3. Secluded, and at a considerable distance from summer re- 
sorts, colonies of " bungalow " campers, villages, picnic-grounds, 
and cemeteries. 

4. Within cheap transportation range of food markets, includ- 
ing dairy and vegetable farms. 

5. Near a clean body of water, -where swimming, fishing and 
boating are possible, but distant from marshes and low, wet land. 

6. Free, in so far as possible, from mosquitoes, black flies, mid- 
gets, gnats, and other noxious insects. 

7. Surrounded by vegetation — not too dense or luxuriant but 
sufficiently high to afford shade, some shelter, and much natural 
beauty. 

These taken together constitute an ideal camp-site. 

A Day's Program 
The following suggestion is adapted from H. W. Gibson's useful 
" Camping for Boys " : 

7 :oo Reveille. 

7:15 The Dip. 

7:30 Breakfast. 

8 130 Camp Duties. 

9:30 Educational Recreation. 
11 :oo " Blankets in." 
11:30 Swimming. 



WOOD-SMOKE AT TWILIGHT 109 



12:00 


Inspection. 


12:30 


Dinner. 


12:45 


Siesta. 


2:00 


Sports. 


4:30 


Preparation for the Night. 


5:00 


General Inspection. 


5:45 


"Colors." 


6:00 


Supper. 


6:45 


Meditation and Study. 


7:15 


Campus Games. 


8:00 


Camp Fire and Entertainment. 


8:45 


Tattoo and Hymn. 


9:00 


" Taps " and Good-night. 



What to Eat 
This is not a cook-book, and those who go camping will need the 
advice and directions of their mothers anyhow. The following 
items, selected mostly from Gibson's " Camping for Boys " and 
from my own experience, will prove useful as suggesting the ar- 
ticles of food most easily prepared by the amateur: 

BREAKFAST 

Fruit: Bananas, berries, cantaloupes, apples, stewed fruit and 
berries. 

Cereals: Shredded wheat, cream of wheat, toasted corn flakes, 
Post toasties, puffed wheat, hominy grits, corn-meal mush. 

Eggs: Fried, boiled, scrambled, poached on toast. 

Meats and fish: Bacon, meat hash, meat stew, chopped meat on 
toast, codfish cakes, creamed codfish, fried fresh fish, creamed 
dried beef. 

Vegetables: Potatoes — baked, creamed, mashed, browned, Ger- 
man fried ; baked beans. 

Bread: Toasted, corn bread, hot cakes. 

DINNER 

Soups: Vegetable, bean, clam or fish chowder, corn chowder. 
Meats: As above, also: roasts; stews, beef or lamb; steak, pot- 
roast, Hamburg, corned beef, boiled ham, meat pie. 



no THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Vegetables: As above, also: corn, stewed, escalloped, corn on cob; 
peas; summer squash; tomatoes stewed; apple-sauce, greens. 

Desserts: Ice cream; rice pudding; tapioca pudding; bread pud- 
ding; cottage pudding; sliced peaches; berries; pie. 

SUPPER 

Cereals: As above. 

Cold dishes: Sliced beef, ham, corned beef, potato salad, cold slaw, 

pressed meats. 
Hot dishes: Irish stew, croquettes, frankfurters, potato cakes, 

baked beans, stewed kidney beans, thick soups ; potatoes, as above ; 

creamed salmon; codfish; macaroni and cheese; potato hash. 
Desserts : As above ; also : prunes, stewed apples, etc. 
Cakes: Gingerbread, sweetbread, cookies. 
Relishes: Pickled beets, chow chow, piccalilli. 
Drinks (for all meals) : Milk, lemonade, iced tea, cocoa. 



XIII 

KEEPING CLEAN 

XJUMANITY has been divided into two classes: those 
«■■ * who take a bath and those who do not. And it has 
been said that, no matter how democratic we may as a people 
become, the two classes will never intermarry. Apparently 
then we shall not become a true democracy until we all get 
the bath-habit. 

I do not need to ask to which of these classes my readers 
belong. Really, though, there is more to keeping clean than 
merely taking a bi-weekly bath. We need to keep our 
bodies clean inside as well as outside, and in order to do 
this we have to apply methods that are more difficult and 
patient than the bath-tub. 

Girls are beginning to find out that cleanness is an essen- 
tial of beauty. If a charmingly dressed girl is sallow, has 
yellowish whites to her eyes and is inclined to fatness, she 
cannot be beautiful. We know that the trouble is that she 
over-eats ; we know that this means literally that she is not 
clean. The body is not disposing of its impurities. " The 
plainer your food,'* says Mrs. Burton Chance frankly, " the 
better-looking you will be. You must omit sweets, hot 
bread and rich food from your daily meals if you want to 
be pretty, for neither your complexion nor your figure will 
stand any other treatment/' 

The worst immediate effect of smoking upon a boy is 

in 



ii2 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that it makes him look dirty, or " measly " as the boys say. 
His skin becomes discolored and foul-smelling, his breath is 
offensive, his eyes are dull and watery, his fingers and lips 
are yellowed. It is not strange that the cigarette should 
have been called the " funeral torch." The boy who smokes 
is unfit to touch the lips of a baby, a mother, or a sweet- 
heart. The fact that when he travels a smoker has to use 
cars that are the filthiest except those used to carry hogs has 
been enough to cause many a discriminating lad to decide 
not to be classed with this kind of freight. 

CLOTHES 

My nephew, aged 16, was getting ready for the masquer- 
ade that was to close his term at dancing-school. He had 
hired a naval officer's uniform, and was trying it on. The 
trousers did not suit him. He wanted them turned up, as 
I notice most boys do, until they reached about half-way 
down the calf of his leg. I reminded him that there was 
a certain fullness about a sailor's trousers that is not com- 
mon on land. But he was not convinced. His collar, bor- 
rowed from his father, was an eighth of an inch larger than 
usual. Did I think it was so much too big as to be noticed ? 
I walked around it critically and announced seriously that 
I thought it was at least as good as his own and must be 
much more comfortable. But I saw that he looked at me 
with a suspicious eye, and refused to be persuaded. Even 
his father and mother could not comfort him, and an hour 
later I overheard him interrogating the maid on the same 
subject. The house was entirely upset until he went out. 
I began to wonder if he was going to be like the English boy 
of whom his master said, " All the time he could spare 



KEEPING CLEAN 113 

from the neglect of his duties he gave to the adornment 
of his person." 

" There is one comfort, anyhow," said his patient mother. 
" I don't have to entreat him any more to wash behind his 
ears." 

The boy was at bottom right. A wise woman told me 
once that it is always worth while to dress well, because, 
said she, when one is appropriately clothed he never thinks 
about himself and so is free for what is worth while, but 
when one is poorly or unsuitably dressed he is self-conscious 
all the time. This youth often felt awkward, but he knew 
he would feel less awkward if his appearance was his best. 
His mother was right, too, and it must have been a great 
satisfaction to her to know that hereafter this important 
matter of his bodily cleanliness can be safely consigned to 
her son to take care of. 

I think I am tolerant toward every interest that boys and 
girls take in their clothes. When they turn toward loud ap- 
parel, I try to remember that joyous clothes are the fit sym- 
bol of joyous minds. And when one feels as glorious as 
Solomon I do not mind if he dresses like Solomon in his 
glory. It is true the Harvard Lampoon had this satire on 
college men the other day: The farmer is hunting for 
some old clothes to put on the scarecrow, when his wife sug- 
gests that they get out some of the fancy duds that their 
son brought home from college. " I'm only tryin' to scare 
the crows," responds the father, " not to make them laugh 
themselves to death." 

The scholars have of late been discussing the origin of 
clothes. They have about settled that their earliest pur- 
pose was not protection from cold, as we would suppose, 



ii4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

but adornment. From the beginning garments were in- 
tended to make the human figure appear at its best. I know 
of no better excuse for clothing now. The real use for 
clothes is that they shall serve to make us seem our best. 

This test is one that girls especially need to apply. It is 
natural for us to want to be grown up, and even little chil- 
dren are fond of inflating themselves with the garments of 
grown-ups. It is not strange then that girls should like to 
look like grown-up women. It is not this I object to, 
though I am not convinced that a girl appears at the best 
advantage wearing women's clothes with a girlish face, or 
using the devices with which mature people endeavor to 
repair the ravages of time when time has not yet dealt 
hardly with them. The question is: what kind of woman 
is it that you wish to look like ? Some girls, innocent girls, 
too, and girls who mean no harm, so appear as to resemble 
women whose lives are spoiled by frivolity and sin. 

This is why what I am saying about clothes belongs in 
my chapter on cleanness. I do not like to see young people 
" old-maidish " in dress, I even share with good St. Francis 
de Sales the wish that " the devout may be the best-dressed 
persons in the company," but why should not the dress of 
a maiden at least suggest that she is pure and clean-hearted ? 

Did you ever read about that dear and quaint little lady 
whom W. E. Henley describes: 

" Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl. 
Well might her bonnets have been born on her. 
Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother 
The subject of a real religious call? " 

I do not recommend for girls the quiet beauty of the 
Quaker garb, which Quakers themselves have given up, but I 



KEEPING CLEAN 115 

think it had what is most comely, " a language of gentle- 
ness and beauty — it was impressed with a touch of eter- 
nity/' I think it is quite feasible that the brightest dress 
of the prettiest girl should at least speak this. 

It is natural to like to attract attention, it is right to do so. 
But it is worth while to consider what kind of attention it 
is that one is attracting. To know that men on a corner 
turn when one is passing may not be so delightful, when 
one overhears what they are saying. Many of the un- 
pleasant advances to which girls are subject are occasioned 
by the fact that those who are evil-minded suppose their 
character to be represented by the clothes they have put on. 

CLEAN SPEECH 

" That reminds me of a story," said a man, looking fur- 
tively about, " and as there are no ladies present — " 

" But there are gentlemen present," said the man sitting 
opposite, who was General Ulysses S. Grant. 

" We .cannot help the birds from flying over our heads," 
some one said, referring to this habit of muddy talk, " but 
we may keep them from building their nests in our hair." 
It sometimes takes a brave man to do this, but General 
Grant never was a coward. 

It is often a question just how to act when somebody 
breaks out in this barnyard sort of language. A young fel- 
low doesn't often like to act priggish and reprimand men 
who very likely are older than himself and who know better 
and who are otherwise decent. Professor Jowett got out of 
the difficulty very nicely once when at a dinner a com- 
panion stepped on dangerous ground by suggesting, as he 
rose, " Shall we not continue this conversation with the 
ladies ? " A certain schoolmaster used to permit his boys 



n6 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

to put the fellow under the pump who lost control of his 
mouth, on the ground that obviously he needed cleansing. 
But x this remedy is not always practicable. Probably the 
best thing to do when one doesn't want to be near foulness 
is to walk away. 

And yet I sometimes wish I were big enough to do what 
Colonel Newcome did in Thackeray's story. He had come 
with his son into a college club-room where, after an even- 
ing of good-fellowship an old army captain broke out in an 
outrageous song. " At the end of the second verse the 
Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his stick, and 
looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do 
battle with a Pindaree. ' Silence ! ' he roared out. * Do 
you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that 
you hold the King's commission, and to sit down among 
men of honor, and defile the ears of young boys with such 
balderdash ? ' 

" * Why do you bring young boys here, old boy ? ' cried 
a voice of the malcontents. 

" ' Why ? Because I thought I was coming to a society 
of gentlemen ! ' cried out the indignant Colonel. ' Because 
I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet to- 
gether and allow a man, and an old man, so to disgrace 
himself! For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your 
bed, you hoary old sinner ! Never mind the change, sir — 
Curse the change ! ' says the Colonel, facing the amazed 
waiter. ' Keep it till you see me in this place again ; which 
will be never — by George, never ! ' And shouldering his 
stick, and scowling round at the company of scared bac- 
chanalians, the indignant gentleman stalked away. 

" Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of 
the company looked still more foolish. And Jones gave a 



KEEPING CLEAN 117 

shrug of his shoulders, which were smarting, perhaps; for 
that uplifted cane of the Colonel's had somehow fallen on 
the back of every man in the room.' , 

A CLEAN PAST 

Si They will tell you that Robert Lane died from eating 
a single piece of mince pie," says Fred Lewis Pattee, " but 
on the books of God it is written differently. The truth of 
the matter is that he died from twenty years of gross 
over-eating, and the pie was only the last straw. 

" Doctors tell us that in such diseases as pneumonia and 
typhoid the patient has small chance if his heart has been 
weakened in any way in the years before. There is small 
hope for even the moderate drinker in the crisis of pneu- 
monia. 

" It is so in every crisis ; the only thing we can draw upon 
is our past. 

" Happy is the man who in the crisis has a strong, clean 
accumulated past to draw upon." 

Some years ago a boy in the hospital of Johns Hopkins 
University was very dangerously ill. The case was the 
more one to command sympathy, because the boy's father 
was dead and his mother had come from India with her son. 
The operation that must be performed was certainly going 
to be fatal unless, while it was going on, blood could be put 
into his body from some one else by transfusion. 

Four medical students at once stepped forward when 
the doctor called for volunteers. Each was unselfish, each 
was equally desirous to be of service. A sample of blood 
was drawn from each, and one was found worthy to be 
used. 

He was clean. In his blood and in the blood of his sires 



n8 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

there ran no taint. In the noblest sense he was of " the 
blue-bloods." It must have been a proud hour when he 
stepped into the operating room and gave his life-blood 
and saved the young lad's life. He could do it, because 
there was a clean record behind him. No deed of shame 
had ever fouled his springs of life. 

Such preparedness is also appropriate to girls. The fol- 
lowing prayer, found among the verses of Edward Carpen- 
ter, is supposed to be offered by a girl who may some day 

be a mother: 

i 

" I will keep my body pure, very pure ; 

" The sweet air will I breathe and pure water drink ; 

" I will stay out in the open, hours together, that my flesh may 
become pure and fragrant, for your sake ; 

" Holy thoughts will I think ; I will brood in the thought of 
mother-love. 

" I will fill myself with beauty ; trees and running brooks shall 
be my companions; 

" And I will pray that I may become transparent — that the sun 
may shine and the moon, my beloved, upon you, 

" Even before you are born." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLEANNESS 

Wash with water and not with the towel. 

Use the mirror, not because you are good-looking, but because you 
want to be. 

Even an angel would not be lovely with a smutch on her nose. 

Your employer will notice not the patch on your clothes, but the 
dirt on your knuckles. 

Put on fresh clothing, not because it is Sunday, but when your 
clothing is unclean. 

A cigarette stain on the fingers is enough to keep a boy out of 
any job worth having. 

Why does a girl dress up, and then forget to black her shoes ? 
Why does a boy think that is all there is to dressing up? 



KEEPING CLEAN 119 

Never say anything so nasty that if your words should freeze, 
you would be ashamed to have them thaw out in public. 

Don't say about any other fellow's sister what you would not 
want him to say about yours. 

If your life is a sewer, why take the cover off? 

" Clean out yer morril cubby-holes, 

Sweep out the dirt, scrape off the scum ; 
'Tis cleanin' time for healthy souls — 
Git up an' dust ! The spring hez come ! " 



XIV 
HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL. 

THE first article in the creed of the Camp Fire Girls is, 
" Seek Beauty." This implies that it is something 
that every girl can find. Does it seem an exaggeration for 
me to say that every girl can some day be beautiful? Yet 
I will put it boldly, like this: Every girl who is not posi- 
tively deformed may, during the best and richest years of 
life, be a beautiful woman. The girl who is born beau- 
tiful may reign as a princess for the half dozen years that 
cluster about twenty, but if a girl builds on health and good 
cheer she will, a little later, have a bloom and charm which 
the other has already forever lost. 

To those of us who have to put up with homely faces, 
there are some consolations. A beauty may be acquired 
that is so distinctive that it will turn hearts, if not heads, 
in our direction, and that is so endearing that it will compel 
admiration long after beauty of face has been forgotten. 
The recipes are not patented and are within reach of us all. 

THE RECIPES OF BEAUTY 

The first recipe is, Health. 

Let girls have such vigor as the old English poet sang : 

" Light foot, to press the stirrup 
In fearlessness and glee, 
Or dance, till finches chirrup, 
And stars sink in the sea." 
120 



HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 121 

We sometimes think, when we see the attention that is 
paid to girls who succeed, by means of fine clothes and facial 
decoration, that a pretty, face and a skillful toilette are all 
that are needed to be thought beautiful. But, I tell you, it 
gets harder every year for such a girl to hold the eyes and 
heart, summer as well as winter, of the lad whose own 
body is ruddy with health and whose fun is in the water 
and on the ice and about the athletic field. 

In this age the only proper use for cosmetics is the one 
suggested in the following " Recipe for Beauty " : " Get 
one pot of rouge and one rabbit's foot; bury them two miles 
from home, and walk out and back once a day to see that 
they are still there." 

Mrs. Burton Chance goes so far as to say, " An attrac- 
tion that lasts is absolutely dependent on health; the kind 
of beauty that has something to show at thirty-five is built 
upon the health and can have no other foundation/' 

I am sure every girl has felt warm sympathy for the 
girl in the old English folk-song who went " with the 
raggle-taggle gypsies, O ! " The spirit of that gentle sun- 
worshiper Saint Francis of Assisi is felt by every girl's 
heart. But boys have so monopolized the active sports 
that the part of onlooker has been too readily assumed by 
American girlhood. Girls would not be becoming in base- 
ball and football, and I for one have no love for their public 
appearance in basketball games, but surely the camp and 
the canoe and the wildwood belong as much to Titania as 
to Oberon, to Miranda as to Ferdinand, to Rosalind as to 
Orlando. In camps and hikes many girls to-day are get- 
ting a much-needed antidote to music lessons and dancing 
parties superadded to the high-school curriculum. More 
than this, they are learning those so-much-needed graces, to 



122 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

listen, to look and to meditate. They are regaining those 
primitive powers of womanhood, the conquest of fire, of 
water, of wood, the mastery of their own hands. 
The second recipe is 

BEAUTIFUL SPEECH 

One of the ingredients of such speech is the beautiful 
use of language. The objection to slang is that it is poor 
and ugly, and few are so beautiful of countenance that they 
can afford to let even their words be ugly. Some slang is 
bright and expressive, but the conversation that has no ad- 
jective but " dandy " and no descriptive nouns but " brick " 
and " pill " is poverty-stricken. It takes no more effort to 
learn words that are finely expressive than those that are 
merely popular and unpleasant. Why should we not take 
as much trouble to make our speech beautiful as to make 
our clothing and our persons beautiful? 

Some one the other day, complaining of the poverty of 
our ordinary speech, made the recommendation that each 
of us should learn and practise two new words each day. 
The writer acknowledged that, effective words being un- 
usual, our first utterance of them might seem to us to create 
a sensation somewhat like fireworks. But what of that? 
Our friends will get used to them and probably like them. 
A girl wrote me not long ago, using the work " glamor- 
ous," " just because it is pretty " ; I was glad she did me the 
honor of practising it on me. Why not try also " gram- 
arye," " amphoras," " doubloons " and " cowslip wine " ? 

And why not vary our speech? Instead of " awful " let 
us think of occasions when " painful," " sad," " pitiful," 
" disappointing," " scandalous," " tremendous," or " glori- 
ous," may give it a rest. Rather than " You hain't got 






HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 123 

nothin , on me," suppose we endeavor to substitute, " I don't 
think you have beaten me yet " ; " This is a challenge, is it ? " 
" Who is the brighter this time?" etc. 

What can be prettier than to know how to use the fine 
distinctions in words rightly? Do you know the difference 
between being " pleased " and " happy " and " glad " to do 
a favor? Can you say when you are "complimented" or 
"honored" or "flattered" by a kindly speech? 

Another beautiful trait that grows out of this is the habit 
of making lovely speeches. I do not think this habit is 
hypocritical. It is not practised save by those who think 
kindly thoughts. I shall never forget the girl of fourteen, 
a Quaker maiden, who came up to me after I had been 
telling some stories in First-Day school, and said that she 
had enjoyed them. " But," I said, " my stories were only 
for the children." " I am always a child," she responded 
sweetly, " when thee is speaking." Not only was it a pretty 
speech, but I was not surprised when I knew Miriam better 
to find that she was a lovely girl. 

And of course, the final charm of speech is a low, sweet 
voice, which all the poets have praised. Very prettily did 
Edmund Burke once upon a time define its advantage when, 
writing of his wife under an anonymous guise, he said of 
her, " Her voice is a low, soft music, not formed to rule in 
public assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish 
a company from a crowd, it has this advantage, you must 
come close to her to hear it." 

This is the beautiful way Matthew Arnold thought of it : 

"But on the stairs what voice is that I hear, 
Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear? 
Say, has some wet, bird-haunted English lawn 
Lent it the music of its trees at dawn ? 



124 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Or was it from some sun-flecked mountain-brook 
That the sweet voice its upland clearness took ? " 

I know of a girl who realized the worth of this charm 
so well that she took lessons of a music-teacher in order to 
learn how to laugh well. 

Being something that all can cultivate, it seems strange 
that more women do not appreciate this easy addition to 
their beauty. In these days of sharp outcries on the tele- 
phone, more than one instance is on record of men who 
have hunted up those who used sweet voices with this in- 
strument, because they felt sure they must be possessed of 
quiet spirits. 

A PLEASANT SMILE 

Another beautiful way is that of Cheerfulness. No face, 
however beautiful by nature, can remain so if it is perpet- 
ually sour and discontented. Some anonymous writer 
describes "a Thoroughbred," as follows: "Waiting for 
her smile is the most delightful of anticipations, and when 
it comes it is always dearer than you remembered, and 
irradiates all who are in her company with happiness." 

Richard Le Gallienne has a very pretty essay " Concern- 
ing a Woman's Smile," in which he says some very caustic 
things (he calls it " frying the mermaid ") about the smile 
of Circe, the smile of wicked allurement, but he closes thus : 

" But all the smiles on the faces of women are not evil 
smiles, not smiles of seduction, or of cruelty, or of arro- 
gance. Good women smile, too — and when they smile it 
is as though the heaven openedr It is only when a good 
woman smiles that one knows what a smile is. 

" Have you seen mothers smile over their cradles ? or 
seen a wife smile up into the face of her husband? Have 



HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 125 

you seen her smile down upon him when he has fallen 
asleep from weariness, and has thus become to her — as 
all men are to all women — just another child to take care 
of? 

" These are the smiles for which you can get no pic- 
tures. And no words. 

" Mothers and nurses don't sit, or stand, for their photo- 
graphs. They smile in private. 

" They smile because they are good women, helping the 
helpless, and the smile on their faces is truly of the joy of 
their unconscious goodness. 

" To a true woman the whole world is her child, and 
she is its mother ; and whether it takes the form of baby or 
husband, saint or sinner, or soldier limping from the wars, 
she is always there with the smile that is the most attrac- 
tive of all smiles — the smile of a good woman." 

Another ingredient is Appreciativeness. Handsome peo- 
ple are frequently selfish. Those who admire them are so 
attentive to them that such girls grow accustomed to receiv- 
ing courtesies rather than giving them. But those who are 
not so favored can take thought of the better reasons for 
thinking kindly of others, and they can know the better joy 
of giving as well as receiving pleasure. This trait is so un- 
usual that it makes distinguished any one who practises it. 

And this leads me to speak of 

MARGARET, JOY-MAKER 

" Why is it that such beautiful adventures are always 
happening to Margaret? They never do to me." 

Margaret had just come in from an automobile ride, all 
flushed and happy. It was her cousin who was speaking. 

" I think," I answered, " it is because she is such a won- 



126 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

derful person herself. The rest of us have automobile rides 
once in a while, but isn't it true that a ride is made by the 
people who take it?" 

" But you know Margaret gets invited twice as often as 
we do." 

" That may be because the people who give rides like to 
have Margaret along." 

" So you don't think she really does have such better 
times after all? " 

"Of course I think she has better times, but they are 
mostly made out of the same events that the rest of us 
share. When we all go to a concert Margaret enjoys it 
more because she is more capable of a concert than the rest 
of us are. When we all meet a stranger, the stranger al- 
ways likes Margaret the best because Margaret takes the 
most interest in him. Margaret has no better clothes or 
jewels than the other girls, but she just seems to illumine 
what she has." 

" Yes, Margaret is lovely and so young-looking." 

" Margaret will always be young because she is — ex- 
pectant." 

The next to the last recipe for beauty that occurs to me 
is, Beautiful Surroundings. " But how can I have beauti- 
ful surroundings, if I do not have the money to buy them? " 
Beautiful surroundings are not always to be bought with 
money. The Japanese are known everywhere for their 
beautiful homes, in which there is never but one picture on 
the walls, one carefully arranged flower in a vase, and the 
sweetness of simplicity and cleanness. I must tell you about 
a friend of mine, who has grown into her beautiful sur- 
roundings. After I have described her, I will tell you 
what she told me is the best secret of beauty. 



HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 127 

MRS. MELODY 

The most beautiful woman I know is Mrs. Melody. 
Hers is the beauty I have been talking about, one that has 
grown through the years. You will be interested in a dia- 
logue I overheard about her the other day. 

" Isn't Mrs. Melody's the loveliest home, and isn't Mrs. 
Melody the most beautiful woman! What wouldn't I give 
to be like her ! " It was an enthusiastic schoolgirl who was 
speaking. 

" You can be just as beautiful as she is and you can 
have a home that is just as lovely as hers, if you will." 

" Why, what do you mean? " 

"Are you willing to pay? " 

"What would it cost?" 

" Twenty years ,of getting ready." 

The lady continued. " I knew Mrs. Melody when we 
were in school together. Everything she had and is she has 
earned for herself." 

"Was she ever poor?" 

* Not only was she poor, but she was brought up on a 
farm away from any village. She was ill-dressed and 
awkward and homely when I first knew her. There wasn't 
a trace to be seen of the lady you have seen to-day. She 
was so poor that she had to work for her board, and she 
took the dresses that her older sisters handed down to her. 
But she must have had some sort of picture in her mind of 
what she wanted to become. I think it was taken from a 
refined lady, the wife of a minister who was with us for 
a short time. She didn't merely ape her ways. She tried 
to find out what made her good. And so she kept on being 
herself while at the same time she absorbed grace and charm 
from the other." 



128 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" But I am sure she married a prince." 

" He was a princely fellow, but he was poor, too, and 
he also came off a farm. He was brilliant but cold and 
stiff. She taught him how to show her affection. She 
drilled him in social graces, and all the charm you saw in 
him to-day he learned from her. Fortunately, too, he is 
a man big enough to know it. And as for the home — " 

" Yes, they have plenty of money/' 

" They have to-day, but they were very poor when they 
began." The lady laughed. " I can remember when some 
of Mrs. Melody's chairs were made out of barrels, and when 
her toilet-table was a box with a mirror on top of it. But 
even then she was queenly among her boxes and barrels. 
She made mistakes, but she was always learning. I have 
heard her tell with a smile how she outgrew a stamped- 
velvet parlor set, and how it hurt her to lay aside some 
china statues that she had on her mantel shelf. But when- 
ever she did outgrow anything, she would gently break or 
put away the old idol, and bravely put up her new one. 
And to-day did you notice that her living room had in it 
only a few things, but those all beautiful? The charm of 
it really was her hospitality, and her beauty is chiefly her 
thought fulness. You have often been in more expensive 
homes than hers and you know a great many people who are 
regarded as more fortunate, but every relation is made by 
the people that are in it. Shall I tell you the secret that 
Mrs. Melody once told me ? " 

"Oh, do!" 

" I asked her once how she came to be so lovely and 
happy, and she answered : ' I have always played I was 
going to be a fairy princess, and so I have always tried to 
be one.' " 



HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 129 

THE SWEETHEART OF A MILLION 

You say you do not wish to wait until you are old to 
be beautiful. It is not necessary to do so, yet there would 
be something to be said for it, even if this were the choice. 
Not long ago a woman died in our country who was sweet- 
heart to a million men. Did you notice that phrase? — 
sweetheart to a million men. She was a very old woman 
when the ovation occurred of which I wish to tell you. 
During the Civil War she had, with all her wonderful 
energy and tenderness, nursed soldiers. Twice after it she 
broke down in health because of her exertions. Succes- 
sively she took charge of the American Red Cross, the re- 
lief work in the Mississippi floods, at the Johnstown dis- 
aster and in the Armenian massacre. At seventy-five she 
went personally to Turkey to superintend the relief expedi- 
tions. The following year she nursed and tended soldiers 
in the Spanish-American War with her own hands. Her 
last public service was in the Galveston disaster in 1900 
when she was eighty. At eighty-three she was " packing 
her things " to go to Mexico. At eighty-nine she suffered 
a severe attack of pneumonia, and was told that she had 
but one chance of recovery. " Then I will take that 
chance," she replied. You are aware that I am telling you 
about Clara Barton, and perhaps you did not know that she 
was beautiful. Listen to what Percy H. Epler says in his 
biography of her: 

At a meeting in Boston in 1909 she purposely sought to 
avoid an ovation by remaining on the platform until she 
supposed that the audience had all turned to go. Then 
she started to walk down the aisle with Gen. Shafter, with 
whom she was chatting. Suddenly she paused ... to be- 



i 3 o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

come conscious of a great audience still sitting, an audience 
of old soldiers, who refused to stir. As she turned toward 
them they rose, choking their emotions. Then the tumult 
broke. 

" Three cheers for Miss Barton ! " Voices hoarse with 
feeling rang out on every side. 

" Tiger ! " shouted one. 

" No, not tiger," interrupted another. " Sweetheart ! " 

At this they collapsed, and the cheers broke into sobs. 

So the last and best recipe for beauty is, Lovingkindness. 

CODE OF RULES FOR BECOMING BEAUTIFUL 
THROUGH HEALTH 

These rules are condensed, by permission, from Martha Foote 
Crow's " The American Country Girl." 
Bodily carriage. 

Hold the head erect. 
Keep the chest high. 
Hold the abdomen in. 

Rest the weight of the body on the balls of the feet. 
Keep this position constantly, by day and by night. 
When lying down, stretch out ; do not curl up. 
Exercise. 

Make a special study of the proper times for exercise and take a 

normal amount of it at those times. 
Let nothing induce you to undertake severe bodily work or 

strain when the body is not in a condition to sustain the 

strain. 
When all conditions are right for it, take a good deal of joyous 

exercise. 
Learn some systematic exercises and practise them every day. 
Systematize the exercise in housework as far as possible and 

supplement it when needed by long walks and hill-climbing. 

Correct breathing. 

Take long breaths of fresh air on rising and frequently through 
the day. 



HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL 131 

Breathe always through the nose and from the diaphragm. 
Keep the air in the room fresh by day and by night. 
Breathe deeply to keep the mind clear, the blood pure, and the 
spirits buoyant. * 

Clothing. 
Let the weight of clothing hang from the shoulders. 
Have the clothing loose enough to allow free play of the dia- 
phragm in breathing and of the limbs in exercise. 
Protect the feet and ankles from exposure to wet and cold. 
Keep the chest well protected but do not over-wrap the neck. 

Food and eating. 

Have meals absolutely regularly and at proper intervals. 
Choose foods adapted to present needs. Study adaptation of 

foods so as to know how to choose. 
Drink at least six glasses of pure water daily, between meals. 
Always think and speak of something pleasant while eating. 

Elimination of waste. 

Free the body from poisonous waste by keeping the bowels active. 

By keeping the pores of the skin open. 

By using a great deal of well-planned, vigorous exercise. 

By general cleanliness. 

Cleanliness. 

Take a cold tonic sponge or shower bath every day when in 
good health. 

Take a warm cleansing bath once or twice a week. 

Keep the mouth and skin free from dirt and germs. 

Give perfect care to the hair and the finger-nails. 

Wash the hands before eating or serving food. 

Brush the teeth at least twice every day — on rising and on 
retiring; after every meal is better still. 

Avoid gathering or spreading disease germs through any form 
of contact. 

Amount of sleep. 

Ten and one-half hours (8: 30 to 7:00) for those 10 to 14 years 

old. 
Ten hours (9:00 to 7:00) for those 14 to 16 years old. 



132 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Nine and one-half hours (9: 30 to 7: 00) for those 16 to 18 years 
old. 
Eight hours (10 :oo to 6:00) for those 20 to 30 years old. 
Lost sleep must invariably be made up. 
Try to go to sleep happy. 

Rest 

When you work, work efficiently ; when you rest, rest efficiently ; 

whatever you do, do it with all your might. 
When resting, relax perfectly; let go. 
Stop worrying; think of something else; think of something 

cheerful. 
Do not yield to impatience or to anger; they shorten life. 
Think pure and beautiful thoughts; learn the beautiful thoughts 

of others and say them over till they become your own. 
Cultivate a well-balanced mind ; preserve courage and cheer. 

Prevention of illness or of a depressed state of health. 
Study the laws of hygiene and of sanitation. 
Avoid patent medicines of all kinds. 
When ill, consult a reliable physician. 

Prevent illness by following the laws of health and by regular 
health examinations. 



XV 
THE VALUE OF DOING THINGS BADLY 

«|F a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing 

1 badly." 

The Englishman who uttered this surprising proverb 
said the other day that he would like to amend another 
one. He said that if it were true that " the battle of 
Waterloo was won on the cricket-ground of Eton," he was 
sure it was done by poor cricket players. It took the thou- 
sands who fumbled away at the game on village greens more 
than the few crack players at Eton. 

Is Chesterton right ? Does it sometimes pay to do things 
badly? I think it does. 

You realize that being a football player may sometime 
help you to become a good soldier and citizen, but it would 
be hard to prove that being a better player than you now 
are would make you a better soldier. In other words, you 
are playing the game as well as it deserves to be played to 
make you a finer man. Any improvement in your playing 
would mean nothing but a little more fun and glory for 
you. 

What really is play? It is doing the thing I like to do, 
for its own sake. When I say, " Doing the thing I like 
to do," what I mean is, Bringing out my own self, my own 
character. This means that, in spite of interruptions, of 
pretenses, and without tricks or anxiety for rewards or 

i33 



i 3 4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

victories, I want to be free to be myself, to live out what 
is the best joy to my own soul. 

The great scientist, Herbert Spencer, was very fond of 
playing billiards. One day when a younger man of affairs 
beat him outrageously, he turned to him sternly and told 
him that such good playing as that was evidence of a mis- 
spent youth. I quoted this one evening to a young fellow 
who was terribly beating me at bowling. " It may be that 
my play indicates a misspent youth/' was his rejoinder, " but 
yours certainly shows misdirected energy ! " 

He had the joke on me without doubt. Still, in the main 
I was right. A man can play at bowling or billiards only 
moderately well if he is going to accomplish anything else. 
When Robert Louis Stevenson played — as he did once a 
year with great enthusiasm — the balls flew everywhere and 
his friends had to dodge them constantly, but if he had 
played better, probably he would not have written " Treasure 
Island." 

So, while you enjoy seeing your chum make a brave goal 
in football or a home-run in baseball, why should you your- 
self be ashamed to be a mere "duffer" at either game? 
You enjoy playing as much as he enjoys the victory, and 
while you get no glory out of it, maybe you are going to 
get your glory in some higher place. 

When you see people who have a number of attractive 
social accomplishments, such as successful card-playing, the 
ability to play lively musical accompaniments, skill with the 
chafing-dish, you often feel boorish beside them. I myself 
think such handiness is admirable. But I do not envy it. 
I once knew a young man who could do everything of a 
public and social sort that was done in our town better than 
anybody else. He could trim the church, write the Christ- 



THE VALUE OF DOING THINGS BADLY 135 

mas pieces, and play the organ; he got up all the picnics, 
cooked the provisions, and entertained those who went, and 
we all said that he was a genius. The last I knew of him 
he was a clerk in a fish-market. He did so many trivial 
things well that he could master nothing that was not trivial. 

" Oh," but I hear one of you say, " often doing the 
little things poorly is simply laziness." 

True enough. Many a boy goes out with the Boy Scouts 
and feeds the birds in winter, knowing that his picture will 
be in the papers, and then comes home without strength 
enough left to bring up the coal or skill enough to fix his 
sister's skates. 

Before you can call a man lazy, though, you have to find 
out what he really amounts to. Lord Tennyson remarked 
once : " I think it the height of luxury to sit in a hot bath 
and read about little birds." Still one can hardly call the 
author of the " Idyls of the King " lazy. Tennyson de- 
scribed his friend Edward Fitz Gerald thus : 

" You sit 
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, 

While your doves about you flit, 
And plant on shoulder, hand and knee, 

Or on your head the rosy feet." 

And Fitz Gerald himself was once caught, during a rainy 
week, looking at a sun-dial in a garden and observing en- 
viously, " It must have an easy time of it." Yet if I had 
written the Rubaiyat I should not want to be called lazy. 
E. V. Lucas says, " My idea of a garden is a place to lie 
down in " — a remark with which I sympathize, and Hilaire 
Belloc writes, " The detestable habit of walking for ex- 
ercise warps the soul " — and though I have never tried it, 



136 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

I agree with him. But these men are not lazy; they are 
among the most industrious writers in England. 

I have some admiration for the conceited youth who when 
he was asked if he could play chess, said he " could try." 
He realized, perhaps, that as a game it was worth a happy 
experiment, but perhaps not much more. I know a man 
who caused his wife some displeasure because he would not 
take hold and help her maid-servant in a task that would 
have taken him not more than half an hour. He afterward 
explained that he knew he could have helped but poorly, 
but that during that half -hour he had by some literary task 
earned enough money to hire a workman for three days. 

So I hope you will agree with me that we may dare to do 
some things badly with a clear conscience, if only we do 
well the things worth while. 



XVI 

f 

DO WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID TO 

I WAS much interested the other day in reading an 
original fairy story written by a young boy. He was 
telling about the princess into whose room a wolf had en- 
tered, which had crept under her bed. When she came in 
at night she heard a sound in her room that she did not 
understand. Then came this fascinating sentence: 

" And so she was too frightened to go to bed, which she 
did." 

The English is a bit queer, but the sentiment is superb. 
She did what she was afraid to do, and that was what 
Emerson said is the proof of bravery. 

Isn't this the kind of courage that we admire the most, 
the kind that sticks when it doesn't see how it is coming 
out ? William E. Henley, Robert Louis Stevenson's friend, 
was, like Stevenson, sickly. After he became nearly blind 
he wrote: 

" Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
Finds and shall find me unafraid." 

Even this did not cause him dismay, and that is why I 
think the verse that follows is the finest trumpet-blast of 
the last century : 

137 



138 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate, 
I am the captain of my soul." 

His was a peculiarly lonely courage, because it was not, like 
the soldier's, one that men could see, to admire and cheer. 

" One dared to die ; in a swift moment's space 
Fell in war's forefront, laughter on his face. 
Bronze tells his fame in many a market-place. 

" Another dared to live ; the long years through 
Felt his slow heart's blood ooze like crimson dew 
For duty's sake, and smiled. And no one knew." 

Perhaps it is partly grit or fortitude that fellows learn 
together in such games as football which explains how they 
are plucky through life. There are many situations in the 
game where victory is plainly impossible, and where the 
thing to do is simply to hold off defeat with united grit. 

Here is the song they sing at Williams College when the 
opposing team looks likely to make a goal in football : 

" They may drive us back by inches, — 

We strive to get the ball ; 
We hold our own by clinches, 

Their gains are always small. 
Their rushes may be clever, 

Their interference fine; 
Then comes their last endeavor, — 

We're on our ' Five- Yard Line.' 

" While in life's stern game we're striving, 
Our pluck can never fail ; 
That firmness still surviving, 
We're never known to quail. 



DO WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID TO 139 

Then we show the spirit royal, 

As in the ninth our nine. 
There's still a ' Stone Wall ' loyal, 

When we're on our ' Five- Yard Line.' " 

Such grit is more than mere stubborn endurance. " Clear 
Grit," as Robert Collyer used to define it, " is the best there 
is in man, blossoming into the best he can do, in a sweet 
and true fashion, as a rose blossoms on a bush or a bird 
sings in a tree." This definition suggests that there is 
something springlike and musical about it. 

TWO SOLDIERS OF FORTITUDE 

Never was there a nobler expression of cheerfulness in 
the presence of defeat and despair than that which was 
shown by General Robert E. Lee. His armies had been 
reduced to starvation and almost to nakedness. They had, 
as Thomas Nelson Page says, " tracked the frozen roads 
of Virginia with bleeding feet; their breakfast was often 
nothing but water from a roadside well, and their dinner 
nothing but a tightened belt." The General " deemed him- 
self happy to be able to send his wife one nearly dried up 
lemon," and he acknowledged with joyous gratitude her 
gift of a dozen home-knit socks with which to clothe the 
feet of his soldiers. At length, to save further bloodshed, 
he surrendered his decimated army to Grant. The ablest 
soldier of his time, perhaps of all time, cheerfully acknowl- 
edged defeat. But "there was quietness in that man's 
mind. When the sky was darkened he had simply lighted 
the candles and gone on with his duty." After the war was 
over, howled at by men who never had had the courage or 
the ability to stand against him in battle, he calmly sought 
only the opportunity to serve his native state in an honorable 



140 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

and useful way, and when some one tempted him with a 
fabulous sum for the use of his name replied pleasantly, 
" Do you not think that if my name is worth $50,000 a 
year, I ought to be very careful about taking care of it? " 
Offered the presidency of a little college at a salary of 
$1500, he accepted, and rode alone on his old war-horse, 
Traveller, into the college town one afternoon to take up a 
work for the youth of Virginia that lasted until he died. 
" Yes, ride away, thou defeated general! Ride through 
the broken fragments of thy shattered army, ride through 
thy war-wasted land, amid thy desolate and stricken people. 
But know that thou art riding on Fame's highest way: 

1 This day shall see 

Thy head wear sunlight and thy feet touch stars.' " 

If the reader asks why such a eulogy should be spoken of 
a Confederate officer by one who descends , from Northern 
stock, let his answer be like that given by Honorable Charles 
Francis Adams when he was taunted in England with Con- 
federate successes, and answered proudly, " They are my 
countrymen." Lee was my countryman, and as " a Prince 
once said of a Monarch slain, 

* Taller he seems in Death/ " 

We all love Robert Louis Stevenson because he was so 
plucky. But do we quite realize just what kind of pluck 
his was ? There have been men before him who were con- 
demned to sick-beds. The best we could say about them 
was, that they grinned and bore it. But what we have to 
tell about Stevenson is, that he laughed and enjoyed it. 
His admirer, Chesterton, has put it in some brilliant phrases : 
" He discovered that a battle is more comforting than a 



DO WHAT YOU ARE AFRAID TO 141 

truce " ; " The faith of Stevenson was that existence was 
splendid because it was desperate " ; " Others have justified 
existence because it was a harmony. He justified it because 
it was an inspiring and melodious discord " ; " His resigna- 
tion can only be called an uproarious resignation." And 
the reason he helps us and gives us such courage, Chesterton 
says, is because " He discovered that for one man who 
wanted to be comforted a hundred wanted to be stirred; 
that ordinary men wanted not life or death, but drums." 
And so, as his friend Barrie says : " The drummer lay on 
his couch, beating his drum." 

This spirit, Joseph Lee, the playground expert, tells us, 
is the old fighting instinct of mankind, which, he says, con- 
sists in " joy in the cussedness of things." 

Whenever I find myself confronted with trouble so dark 
that I cannot see the way out, I like to turn to this battle- 
song of John Neihardt's: 

" More than half beaten, but fearless, 

Facing the storm and the night; 
Breathless and reeling, but tearless, 

Here in the lull of the fight, 
I who bow not but before Thee, 

God of the Fighting Clan, 
Lifting my fists I implore Thee, 

Give me the heart of a Man ! 

" What though I live with the winners, 

Or perish with those who fall ? 
Only the cowards are sinners, 

Fighting the fight is all. 
Strong is my Foe — he advances ! 

Snapt is my blade, O Lord ! 
See the proud banners and lances ! 

Oh, spare me this stub of a sword ! 



142 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Give me no pity, nor spare me ; 

Calm not the wrath of my Foe. 
See where he beckons to dare me ! 

Bleeding, half beaten — I go. 
Not for the glory of winning, 

Not for the fear of the night ; 
Shunning the battle is sinning — 

Oh, spare me the heart to fight ! 

" Red is the mist about me ; 

Deep is the wound in my side; 
1 Coward ' thou criest to flout me ? 

O terrible Foe, thou hast lied ! 
Here with my battle before me, 

God of the Fighting Clan, 
Grant that the woman who bore me 

Suffered to suckle a Man ! " 



XVII 
THE GLORY OF SELF-MASTERY 

A VIGOROUS old fellow was once reproved by a 
young one for not controlling his temper. " Young 
man," he thundered, " I control more temper every fifteen 
minutes than you ever did in a lifetime. ,, 

I wonder if the joy of self-mastery wasn't what gave him 
his success. Don't you like to read of such instances? 

I read the other day that a German who later became a 
great philosopher, discovering that novel-reading was taking 
away his power to do steady work, stopped in the midst of 
an exciting romance and pitched it into the middle of a 
stream. I read of a business man who had always enjoyed 
a pipe. He had lately bought a very beautiful meerschaum, 
which he was coloring, but one day, saying " Good-by, you 
rascal," he dropped it down the sewer. A young man, who 
later became an orator, ran away from his first audience 
and hid in the woods until they had dispersed. Then he 
came back to his study, saying, " O God, I can speak, and 
I will ! " And then he did. 

" I did not think that anything could have conquered me." 
This was the pitiful word of a strong man who had dis- 
covered in himself a weak place that had caused his ruin. 
I think that remark explains why I do not smoke. 

WHY I DON'T SMOKE 

I was looking the other day at a cigar somebody gave me 
six months ago at a public dinner, and wondering why I 

143 



144 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

did not smoke it. I have no inherited prejudice against 
tobacco. I have no special dislike for it. I am not one 
who is peculiarly susceptible to its effects. If I should 
smoke this cigar and several more, I do not suppose I would 
feel the worse. 

While I was thinking these thoughts, I chanced to open 
a book of essays written by Frederick Harrison when he 
was seventy-six years old, and he stated there so clearly 
what I had felt not so clearly that I think I would do well 
to set it down. I find there are two reasons why I don't 
smoke. 

One is that smokers are usually so disagreeable to other 
people. Mr. Harrison says : " It is the only vice that in- 
evitably annoys and injures the innocent neighbor." I 
have traveled in many countries, I have crossed the Atlantic 
ten times, and as I look back upon it all, the chief annoyance 
of travel has been smokers. They have left their trail on 
every steamship deck, they have puffed smoke at one from 
every carriage, they have crowded into every car, including 
those in which smoking was not permitted, and even if they 
did not try to smoke, which often they did, they forced the 
odor of their stenched clothes upon me. Is there any other 
habit which men have, harmless or otherwise, of which they 
leave such unpleasant public reminders? The butcher and 
the surgeon remove their aprons, the foundryman washes 
his hands, the garbage-collector changes his clothes, and 
those who work among vile odors take* a bath before they 
appear in society. But the smoker, who could not sit down 
with his friends sweaty from toil or play without cleansing 
himself, not only comes in calmly and infects the air of a 
closed room with his staleness, but asks permission to do 
so afresh and is actually offended if you object. He seems 



THE GLORY OF SELF-MASTERY 145 

proud to make himself a nuisance. Now I no doubt am a 
worse sinner than many a smoker, but I have had enough 
sense given me to avoid making myself a physical offense. 

I have always admired a man of whom I once heard who 
would not eat in his shirt-sleeves, even when he was alone, 
because he said he had too much respect for himself. I 
read once with pleasure of a young fellow who was taking 
a long railroad journey to the girl he was about to marry. 
A man who had watched him thoroughly cleaning up in the 
men's room every hour during the day asked him why he 
didn't wait and wash once for all just before he left the 
train. "Wouldn't he be just as clean when he arrived?" 
" Yes," the young man laughingly replied, " but I take some 
satisfaction in being clean all the «way." These incidents 
seem to me to express pretty well the attitude toward life 
of the non-smoker. 

The other reason I don't smoke is because most smokers 
overdo it. Mr. Harrison is probably right when he says 
that " more men have died of nicotine than have died of 
drink." But I think not so much of death as of disability. 
I should dislike to think that any noxious habit could con- 
quer me. There is to me something unmanly about the 
famished manner in which some men stuff their pipes after 
eating or light cigarettes in the midst of business. If I 
ever have an intellectual tussle with a man and I see him 
preparing for it by a smoke, I at least thank God for a clear 
head. Ruskin spoke of his scorn of " men who would put 
the filth of tobacco in the first breeze of a May morning," 
and I cannot but share his belief that much of the fragrance 
and beauty of this world are lost to the man who smells 
and sees it through tobacco smoke. There was a touch of 
spiteful glee in Mr. Harrison's essay in which he told of 



146 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

himself at seventy-six, in fine health and still able to play 
cricket handsomely with much younger men. When my 
sons were small I suppose I refrained from smoking partly 
as an example to them, but now that they are grown I con- 
fess I am ashamed to, for fear they will think " the old 
man " is going into his dotage. 

SELF-MASTERY IN A NEW SCHOOL 

One of the hardest, and finest, places to show self-mastery 
is when one enters a new school. Here are liberty to do as 
one likes, plenty of fellows to show one how to make a fool 
of himself, and all sorts of mistakes in store for one who 
doesn't know his own mind. 

President Hyde once made the following remarks to the 
freshmen at Bowdoin as to the importance of not being led 
by the nose by somebody else who is going wrong. 

" Don't take advantage of your new liberty all at once. 
That is the most cheap and easy way of announcing to the 
college community that you are very fresh. Let drink and 
gambling, licentiousness and extravagance alone for the 
first year. Don't do anything for the childish reason that 
there is no authority standing over you to forbid. 

" Use this first year in looking about, and making up your 
mind what sort of man you mean to be. See what vice 
does to the men who practise it; how it defeats the ends of 
scholarship; hardens the heart; wastes the money; grieves 
the parents; and injures the man's standing with the best 
sort of his fellow-students. Count up the obvious cost ; and 
then, in the light of what a year of observation and reflec- 
tion will show you of its real nature, make up your mind — 
don't let others make it up for you — make up your own 



THE GLORY OF SELF-MASTERY 147 

mind whether or not that is the sort of college life you want 
to lead, and that is the sort of man you want to be. 

" Look at the other sort of college man ; the man who, if 
he pretends to study at all, does it honestly and earnestly, 
with a genuine interest in what he undertakes to learn ; who 
enters vigorously into athletics; has a good time in the 
thousand ways that involve no injury to himself or to any- 
body else ; gives his best to some forms of the college com- 
munity interests and takes the best the college life has to 
give him. Watch these fellows for a year ; and see if these 
are not the men you really admire, and with them you want 
to be counted. For they are far more numerous than the 
others; and though it is not quite so easy to get ranked as 
one of them within the first six months, as it is to assume 
the ways and airs of the other set, it is worth waiting and 
working a year or two for the sake of ultimately being 
worthy of being counted one of them." 

President Hyde hints at one important plain truth. Lack 
of self-mastery is usually due not to lack of courage but to 
laziness. It isn't because one is afraid to say one's soul is 
one's own that one rushes into evil courses ; it is rather be- 
cause one is too indolent to take the trouble to resist the 
pull of the tide. As I heard Paul Pearson say once: 
" There is one kind of laziness that never starts, and another 
and more dangerous kind that never stops." If you go 
wrong in college it is most likely to be because you are too 
lazy to stop. 

WHAT SELF-MASTERY MEANS IN LIFE 

I have lately had to do with a distressing case where a 
young man of great ability had utterly failed in a position 



148 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

for which he had been carefully trained. The men who 
found it necessary to ask for his resignation did so with 
reluctance and tried at every point to guard the welfare of 
the youth himself. It was hard to locate his weakness. 
It is true that he smoked, but apparently more out of custom 
than desire, he acknowledged that he drank occasionally, 
but not often enough to cause this to be a factor in his 
failure. He was unpunctual, unsystematic, careless in his 
personal relations, given to indiscreet confidences. In 
short, while often he did brilliant things, he was unreli- 
able and irritatingly disappointing. Some one called him 
" childish," and it was a good word, because we think of a 
child as one who always acts on the immediate impulse, 
thinks a good deal of himself, and lets his play interfere 
with his duty. He could not master his task because he had 
not mastered himself. 

This fault goes pretty deep. The wise warden of a 
large prison is quoted as saying : " Most of these men are 
here because they have not learned sufficiently the lesson of 
self-control." 

Fortunately, the secret of self-mastery has been discov- 
ered, and may be told in a sentence. To master yourself, 
find a big incentive. Those who were spoken of in the 
first of this chapter took the helm of their own lives as soon 
as they had found a good enough goal to steer for. Not 
by forcing yourself down but by cheering yourself forward 
will you conquer the little fault that keeps you back. Ed- 
ward Howard Griggs once put it in a way that you cannot 
forget. Orpheus and Ulysses each sought to pass the Isle 
of Sirens. Ulysses had his ears stopped with wax and him- 
self tied to the mast so that he might not yield to their en- 
ticing songs. His sailors simply rowed him past ! Orpheus 



THE GLORY OF SELF-MASTERY 149 

played such beautiful music as he drew near that he could 
not hear the sirens. 

The spirit of Orpheus is what makes the angels whistle. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR SELF-MASTERY 

" Some folks have to be cranked every day. Others are self- 
starters." 

" Those who are waiting for something to turn up will find that 
it is their toes." 

There are no to-morrows for those who have a wish-bone where 
the backbone ought to be. 

I don't propose to lose the big things in life by being asleep when 
I need to be awake, off guard when the other fellow is getting 
ready to rob me, or by being flattered into stupidity when I need 
to use all the brains I have got. 

It is easy to go with the crowd in college and be a fellow who 
can sit up latest, make the most convivial noise, and get slapped on 
the back hardest for being a good fellow; but the man who stays 
a sophomore all his life makes a pitiful figure. 

To a girl, self-mastery means that queenly control of one's own 
person, one's conduct and one's ideals that holds the honor and 
respect of others. 

To a woman, self-mastery means chiefly the power to keep grow- 
ing. The danger to the girl who to-day is entertaining to young 
men in white flannels in a hammock in the summer-time is that, 
after the young man has gone away to college, she shall let him 
outgrow her. The girl whose to-morrows are always larger than 
her yesterdays never grows old. 



BOOK II 

THE ALERT MIND 

" All the work that is worth doing, rightly handled, is the 
greatest fun of all the fun there is." 

— C. Hanford Henderson. 



The plan of this division of the book is as follows: 

Chapters XVIII-XXI tells how an Alert Mind faces Life. 

Chapters XXII-XXVII are about Methods of Self-Education. 

Chapters XXVIII-XXXVII have to do with the Struggle for Self- 
Improvement. 

Chapters XXXVIII-XLVII discuss the Choice of a Vocation, and 
How to Prepare. 



XVIII 
THE FELLOWSHIP OF SPRING 

NEARLY every young person finds such a tremendous 
mental awakening during high-school years that it is 
almost like a new birth. 

We do well therefore to speak of the years through which 
you are passing as " life's springtime." The president of 
Olivet College once selected 200 biographies. He found 
the following instances of enhanced life between the years 
of fourteen and twenty. Of these, 120 had a new craze 
for reading; 109 became great lovers of nature; 58 wrote 
poetry; 58 felt a great and sudden development of energy; 
53 devoted themselves for a time to art and music; 53 be- 
came very religious; 51 showed strong powers of leader- 
ship; 49 had great longings of many kinds; 46 developed 
scientific tastes; 41 grew very anxious about the future; 
31 were passionately desirous to become helpful to others; 
23 showed powers of invention ; and so on and so on. 

He names some particularly striking cases of tremendous 
and joyous enthusiasms. Thomas Edison read every book 
for fifteen solid feet in the cases around the rotunda of the 
Detroit Public Library. Benjamin Franklin had a passion 
for the sea; wrote verses and sold them on the streets of 
Boston; left home for a new life at seventeen; and founded 
the first public library in Philadelphia before he was twenty- 
one*. " Joseph Henry followed a rabbit under the Public 

. i53 



154 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted 
him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, he read all 
the fiction the library contained, then turned to physics, 
astronomy and chemistry, and developed a passion for the 
sciences." While Nansen was " at the morning hour when 
all the world turns to gold," he spent weeks at a time in the 
forest alone, and prophesied his great discoveries by inuring 
himself to hardship when trying to live like Crusoe. 

These years are just as interesting to girls as to boys. 
Louisa M. Alcott, so G. Stanley Hall tells us, began to 
write poetry and to keep a journal and to feel romantic when 
she was 15. Frances Hodgson Burnett before that age 
used to feel that " every hour and moment was a wonder- 
ful and beautiful thing"; just to walk, sit, lie around out 
of doors, to loiter, gaze, watch with a heart fresh as a 
young dryad, following birds, playing hide-and-seek with 
the brook — these were her halcyon hours." Helen Keller 
seems to have had her first awakening when she went to 
the World's Fair at 13 ; it was then that she felt her first 
ambition to go to college and enjoy the advantages that 
other girls did. When Jane Addams was a schoolgirl she 
was taken to Madison, Wisconsin, to see Old Abe, the war 
eagle, and there she says she " caught a hint of yearning 
devotion and high-hearted hopes." 

These are the years of promise. Of 100 actors the 
average age of their first success was exactly 18. The age 
of most first poems published falls between 15 and 20. 
Ninety-five per cent, of musicians of talent showed power 
before 16. Of 53 artists 90 per cent, gave proofs of their 
talents before 20. Of 100 pioneers who made their mark 
in the Far West on the frontier the greatest number left 
home before 18. 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF SPRING 155 

HOW THE AWAKENING COMES 

This new mental birth comes in a variety of interesting 
ways. Sometimes there is a distinct saying of good-by to 
childhood. The Roman girl at this time hung up her child- 
hood doll as a votive offering to Venus. It is told of Mrs. 
Thomas Carlyle that when a girl, being compelled to stop 
playing with her dolls, she made sumptuous dresses and a 
four-post bed, and had her doll die upon a funeral pyre 
like Dido, after speaking her last farewell and stabbing her- 
self with a penknife. 

But usually the emphasis is more upon what is coming 
than upon what is being left behind. 

A man was walking one morning alongside a pond when 
he met a strange boy who attracted him by his bright ap- 
pearance. After hurling several questions at him about 
himself and becoming still more impressed with the lad's 
hopefulness he said: "How old are you, my boy?" 

" Well," answered the boy, " I ain't but twelve, but my 
pants are marked sixteen." 

Measure a boy not by his years, but by the girth — of 
his trousers? yes — by the girth of his ambitions. And 
trust him even if he expects more of his own powers than 
others do, for he will walk more soberly and surely after 
he has had a chance to test them. 

I often think of what I heard one day when I dropped 
into a religious meeting conducted by a body called the 
Holy Rollers. Part of their exercises consisted in bouncing 
up into the air whenever their feelings excited them. But 
I was somewhat relieved when one of them said : " It 
makes no difference how high a Christian jumps if only he 
walks straight after he comes down." We may expect and 



156 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

endure a lot of extravagant hopefulness, if only our young 
hopefuls will walk straight after they settle down. 

NEW MASTERIES; NEW INTERESTS 

You are likely to find now that you can learn your lessons 
better than ever before, not in the way of reciting them 
word for word, but as to their general content. Instead of 
verbal memory you begin to have selective memory, that 
is, you choose what is proportionately most important to 
remember, and this is the highest kind of memory. 

Perhaps now you find yourself day-dreaming more. 
You make imaginative plans; you see yourself before an 
imaginary audience; you think of yourself as making great 
conquests; in fact, you feel yourself to be in the center of 
the stage. The important thing is : that you have arrived. 
It is humiliating at times to recognize — that you have not 
been expected! 

It is now that you are likely to take a fresh interest in 
mechanics and in making things, in enjoying the magazine 
Popular Science more than the American Boy, though you 
may discover that your power of appreciating a machine 
or toy is greater than your skill and patience in getting it 
done. Now you feel curiosity in twenty directions at once, 
and perhaps, like a son of mine, bring home a fat volume on 
cotton-seed oil one evening from the library and, after 
squeezing the juice out of it for an hour, go back the next 
day and get another one about canal-digging. Now sun- 
sets grow more beautiful, the distances and motions of the 
stars become fascinating, to be in the water or upon it is 
a delight, and nature speaks clearer messages, while " the 
elms grow somber and human in the twilight and gardens 
dream beneath the rising moon." You try more than be- 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF SPRING 157 

fore to express your enthusiasms, and perhaps chew gum 
to calm your excitement and use slang because no dictionary 
could contain all that you wish to utter. Now is the time 
when many a youth feels uneasy at home or in school, and 
many cases of running-away occur. I myself have known 
of a number of boys who have gone and stayed away a year 
or two. After they had returned they confessed that they 
did not quite know what they went to see, but, like the 
colored man, they had wanted to be " anywhar but whar I 
are." 

After one is half-way through high school, life becomes 
a little quieter. Your feelings do not fluctuate quite so 
much ; your imagination dwells now more on plans that you 
intend actually to carry out, for whose fulfillment you are 
impatient to wait; you begin to reason more carefully, and 
to help this power you may join the school literary or de- 
bating society or read books of more serious value; you 
are more independent of your teachers in your studies. 

During these years of storm and stress it would be 
happier for you if you would keep your mental life more 
even, raising up the low, discouraged places and keeping 
down the excited, lofty ones ; and it may help you to do this 
if you remember that these years of strong feeling are com- 
mon to all who have been young, and that your condition 
is neither as hopeless nor as glorious as. you sometimes feel 
it is. "If you can't be aisy, be as aisy as you can," and 
there is probably nothing much the matter with you, except 
that you are sixteen. What it all means is this: that un- 
derneath the surface froth and billow is the deep and grow- 
ing ground-swell of your Will. The Will, the Effective 
Man, is now being born. 

These are surely years of prophecy and promise, and the 



158 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

chapters of this division of our book are therefore given 
up mostly to suggestions as to how to harness this fine 
energy so that the engine will not merely thrash around 
like a whale, without developing power that is useful. In 
this small but brave and kingly place, called our world, we 
want to be all that we can be and do all that we can do. 



XIX 
ALL ALIVE 

IF some one were to note down the places in this world 
that were mentioned in your conversation, how far 
would they reach out on a map? Suppose they were in- 
dicated by thumb-tacks, and these tacks were attached by 
strings across the map to the central tack that represented 
the town where you live, how extensive would this cobweb 
be? 

" Why, it wouldn't be extensive at all ! " I hear some of 
you exclaim. " It would be just a tangle of short lines 
reaching to tacks all inside my own village." 

I am afraid so. Our lines of interest run as far as the 
swimming-hole and the baseball park and the picnic ground. 
They may occasionally take in a journey to the metropolis 
or a longer jaunt on a vacation, but they are usually re- 
stricted to our play, our work, and our immediate friend- 
ships. 

HOW BIG IS YOUR MAP? 

Why not enlarge your map a little? There is your 
servant girl, Norah. She has a bigger map than you have. 
A veritable cable of lines runs from your kitchen clear over 
to the Emerald Isle, where in separate villages live her many 
cousins. Then did you ever go into the kitchen and hear 
her tell about Blarney Castle and the lakes of Killarney, 
and realize how many thumb-tacks she is entitled to all 

159 



i6o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

over the island of her birth? And have you heard her as 
she crossed the strait and visited Saint Columba at Iona, 
or slipped down into the south country with her stories of 
" the little folk " and the adventures of the seven champions 
in Wales? Or have you heard her tell of O'Connell stand- 
ing like a lion at bay in the Parliament House in London, 
or how her grandfather fought at Balaklava, or of her 
brother in the trenches in front of St. Mihiel? 

There is a brother and sister down your street whose map 
is larger than yours. They do not live in a very good 
house, and they do not spend so much money as you, and 
they could not afford to go to the Panama Exposition. But 
they are great travelers, none the less. Their point of de- 
parture is the public library. They have just come back 
from Scotland, whence they escaped with David Balfour, 
and now they are off to the Black Forest of Germany with 
Gerard Eliaossen, whence they are going on foot to Rome 
and back again. They have been nearly all over England 
with Scott and Dickens, and they were last winter in the 
South Seas with Stevenson and Defoe and expect to go soon 
to Spain with George Borrow. When they rest, they do 
not have to resort to baseball scores or accounts of their 
new clothes to keep up the conversation, but they can retell 
the talks they have had with Doctor Grenfell of the Lab- 
rador, Admiral Peary of the North Pole, and Lieutenant 
Shackleton, from the Antarctic. 

There is a bedridden woman whose map is larger than 
yours. There it hangs on the wall of her sick chamber. 
It is a map of China. It is full of unpronounceable names 
which she can speak glibly. She has a sister who has been 
a missionary there for thirty years. She can show you 
with her finger the long boat journey, followed by another 



ALL ALIVE 161 

in palanquins, which she herself has often taken (in fancy) 
in order to visit her. She can give you the names of the 
scattered towns in a great province where her sister has 
labored. She at home is helping her over there. She has 
made garments for the hospital in this city, and she got the 
girls' missionary society to take care of an orphan in that 
one, and her map is just interwoven with threads of beau- 
tiful and unselfish interest by which she has knit China to 
herself. 

Try it. Put a map on your own wall. Put in your 
stakes at the places that really belong to you. And see if 
you cannot make your own world a larger one. 

WHAT THEY BROUGHT HOME FROM EUROPE 

When crossing the Atlantic westward the prevailing topic 
of conversation is always what people are bringing home. 
Many articles of beauty are taken out of their wrappings 
and passed from one steamer-chair to another before they 
are packed for the last time before disembarking. Es- 
pecially after land is sighted and the light blue manifests 
have been passed about do you see people in the writing- 
room and the dining saloon scheduling their purchases. 
Many a struggle have I witnessed between the new tariff 
laws and a New England conscience. It is astonishing how 
the price goes down on a souvenir from the value that was 
given on the promenade-deck when one comes face to face 
with an ad valorem duty of forty per cent. 

As soon as the steamer docks, the sight becomes even 
more fascinating. Usually I myself travel with nothing 
more than a suit-case, so I sometimes take a moment or two 
to stroll up and down and see how my fellow passengers 
are faring with the inspectors. A customs inspector has 



162 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

an uncanny knowledge of human nature and of the retail 
prices of everything that is sold in London, Paris, or Lu- 
cerne. I recall passing a frantic woman who had been 
showing some rare laces on deck who later had sewn them 
all to her dresses and was trying to persuade the inspector 
that she had bought them in New York. A little later she 
was led to a room for private examination, and I fancy 
that, like the debtor in the Scriptures, she did not escape 
until she paid the uttermost farthing. 

The first thing I ask when my friends return from abroad 
is, " What did you bring back ? " It often turns out to be 
a fair test of character. Even the biggest trunk has its 
limits, so whatever is put in represents a rigorous choice 
that indicates what its purchaser thought worth while. I 
remember a lady who once traveled with me who recognized 
this fact so earnestly that it was quite an anxiety to her 
during her whole trip. She was so desirous that her pur- 
chases should represent the best in Europe that she struggled 
with herself in every great shopping city, until she reached 
Naples, her last stop before embarking for home, without 
making any substantial purchase. She explained to me that 
what she wanted was something that she should always 
cherish and that should at the same time not attract too 
much attention at the customs house. She finally came on 
board with an inlaid writing-cabinet under her arm, which 
was so big that it could not be put in any of her bags and 
which therefore she must have been forced to carry in her 
arms from the time she landed until she arrived at home! 
An impetuous spinster made a purchase at our first stop, 
Queenstown, of an Irish coverlet, that filled a whole valise, 
which she lost at every junction, but it finally turned up in 
Boston and cost her four dollars to get ashore. 



ALL ALIVE 163 

I was once a guest in a rich man's home. He had been 
all over the world and had brought back a multitude of 
curios which he was glad and proud to exhibit. He seemed 
to have a rather good taste in ivories, of which he had a 
easeful. He was a very religious man, so he had many 
remembrances of foreign missions. But the last souvenir 
he showed, as his choicest treasure, was a toreador's suit 
that he bought off the back of a successful bull-fighter on 
Easter Day in Madrid! 

What would you bring back? What should your 
journeys yield you? I asked this question of my dearest 
friend once. He turned to his lovely wife and asked her 
to put out her hand. Upon one finger was a narrow gold 
circlet, which ended in two clasped hands. " It is an old 
Umbrian wedding-ring," he said softly. " It is six hun- 
dred years old. Notice how thin it has worn. It was 
picked up in a field near Perugia. It must have been worn 
many years, and by one who was many years a happy wife. 
Once we lost our own wedding-ring, and I had always been 
hoping I might find something precious enough to take its 
place. So this is what I brought home." 

LEARNING HOW TO LOOK 

Among the precious things that may be brought home, too 
precious to pay duty, is the Power to Look. I mean of 
course particularly the power to look outside one's self. 
You have heard, have you not, of the old woman who knew 
only two divisions of opinions, " My idee " and " Hum- 
bug!" You have perhaps also heard of the American 
tourists who were visiting San Marco, I think it was, in 
Florence. They went about commenting very freely upon 
all the pictures. Finally the monk who was the custodian 



164 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

could stand it no longer, and coming up to them he said 
gently, "I think you do not understand. These pictures 
are no longer on trial. It is we who look at them who are 
on trial. ,, 

This is what I meant when I entitled this chapter, " All 
Alive." I meant not merely that we should be so physically 
vigorous and so mentally alert that we shall go around 
boisterously looking at everything and laughing at many 
things, but that we shall be so open-minded and glad to 
learn that there shall be no doors on any side of us where 
a wise man, knocking, shall have to shake his head and 
say, " Sorry. Blind here. Nobody home." 

" My greatest success," said Louis Agassiz once, " is that 
I have trained five observers." 

The cultured man is the one who knows when it is time 
to take out his note-book. 

A LITTLE SISTER TO A GREAT ART 

I pity the youth who, whenever anything worth while 
comes by, yawns and says that he has seen it twice be- 
fore. 

I intensely admire one who has learned enough about a 
good thing to feel that he has some kinship to it, though it 
be ever so little. 

You know, or you will know some day, the joy that comes 
when you approach a great work of art to have studied 
about it beforehand. " A little girl," says Porter Lander 
McClintock, " had been given a very simple arrangement 
of a melody from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to play on 
the piano. Soon after she learned it, she was taken to hear 
the symphony. When her melody came dropping in from 
the flutes and violins — birds and brooks and whispering 



ALL ALIVE 165 

leaves — she threw up at her friend a flash of radiant sur- 
prise and delight. Her whole soul stirred to see here — 
in this stately place, with the great orchestra, in the noble 
assemblage of glorious concords — her friend, her little 
song. For days she played it over many times every day, 
with the greatest tenderness of expression." 

It reminds one of the old story — told was it of Murillo? 
— that when a young student first saw one of the master's 
pictures, he said, in joy : " I, too, am a painter! " 



XX 

" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 

SOME men of affairs, among whom was Thomas A. 
Edison, were once displaying their watches. This man 
had a fine gold repeater, that one an old silver heirloom, a 
third showed a dollar Ingersoll and boasted that it kept 
as good time as any of the others. When Edison was 
asked to produce his he confessed, " I never had a watch/' 
and then he explained, " I never wanted to know what time 
it was." 

Mr. Edison is probably an exception. You will hardly 
find an office, a schoolroom, or any kind of workshop where 
the approach to closing-time is not the signal for a hasty 
and noisy gathering up of tools preparatory to a prompt, 
even hasty departure. 

Ours is a world of alarm-clocks. Most of us have to be 
awakened by them. Most of us do our daily work with 
one eye on a timepiece. To many men the hands are their 
taskmasters dealing out the days minute by minute and 
hour by hour. Did you ever hear of a schoolboy who asked 
to be allowed to go into school on a holiday ? Did you ever 
know a man who wanted to go to his work when it was not 
a working day? 

But it is said that one summer Mrs. Edison urged her 
husband at last to take a vacation. " Go to some place 
where you would rather go than anywhere else on earth/' 
she said. " All right/' he replied, " I will. Fll start to- 

166 



" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 167 

morrow." So he did. The next morning he went back 
into his laboratory. 

If you ask yourself what the moments have been when 
you did not know what time it was you will find that they 
were those when you were deeply interested. You did not 
care for the time if you were at a party, if you were win- 
ning a game, if you were lost in a book, or engrossed in 
your favorite pursuit, be it work or play. 

The more interests the fewer alarm-clocks. 

The quotation at the head of this talk is, as you know, 
from Shakespeare's " As You Like It." Orlando has just 
met Rosalind in the Forest of Arden, where other noble 
exiles had already learned to " find tongues in trees, books 
in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in 
everything." In such a place and spirit no one missed the 
clocks. 

Given a great interest, who cares to know the time of 
day? It is interest that makes clocks needless. 

Now the question whether one is going to work all his 
life by the hands of a clock or by the measure of interest 
is usually settled in high-school days. 

If a boy tires of school and takes a position because it 
is " a job," he will soon tire of his job, and he will all his 
life watch the clock as anxiously while he is at work as he 
did when he was in school. The difference will be that he 
will probably have put himself in a position where he can- 
not afford to leave the job as he thought he could afford to 
leave school. 

If a boy drifts into a place because it does not require 
difficult preparation or long apprenticeship before he can 
begin to earn, it is almost sure to be a place from which he 
will escape each night with promptness and eagerness. 



1 68 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

The vocations in which a man ceases to count the hours 
because he is doing great work or bearing great responsibil- 
ity usually demand strenuous training. 

But wouldn't you prefer to work with the time-clock 
inside yourself rather than hung on the factory wall? 

ENCHANTED SAUNTERERS 

On my lawn about twenty feet from where I am sitting 
is a tree that has an interesting story. It is an Irish yew, 
the only one in the whole neighborhood, and it was planted 
there about a hundred and seventy-five years ago by John 
Bartram. And who was John Bartram ? He was the first 
American botanist. He had been a farmer, but one day 
in summer running under the shade of a tree in his meadow 
to cool off he picked up a daisy and looked at it carefully. 
He decided that to know a good deal about farming and 
nothing at all about how plants and flowers grow was no: 
real knowledge, and from that time till his death he spent 
much of his time wandering in the study of plants up and 
down the Appalachian range from Maine to Florida, some- 
times alone, sometimes with his son William. Gentle in 
his life, he had many friends, of whom the builder of my 
old house was one. He gathered the rarest flowers and 
plants in his garden in West Philadelphia, where one day, 
at a very old age, learning that the British were marching 
on Philadelphia, and fearing that they would destroy his 
garden, he died of a broken heart. 

Henry D. Thoreau once explained that the origin of 
our word " saunterer " is as follows : In the Middle Ages 
pilgrims to the Holy Land, when asked where they were 
going, replied, " A la Sainte Terre." So the children called 
them " S ciint c-T err curs," Saunterers — Holy-landers. And 



" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 169 

he says that all who go to a Holy Land in their walks " are 
saunterers, in the good sense." So he would very probably 
have called John Bartram a saunterer. 

Lately there died another of those splendid saunterers. 
" I wandered away," he said in the story of his boyhood 
and youth, " on a glorious excursion, which has lasted 
nearly fifty years, and is not yet completed, always happy 
and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or 
making a name, urged on and on, through endless, inspir- 
ing, god-full beauty." This man was John Muir, who be- 
gan his lifelong " excursion " as a shepherd, and who be- 
came the interpreter of the Sierras. Gentle, too, as John 
Bartram, his particular interest was the birds and the wild 
animals, for whose study he never found it needful to carry 
a gun. He loved them so much that one who understood 
him says that " the waters of the river of mercy run through 
his pages with a rush of splendid common sense, sprung 
from a deep understanding of struggle and poverty and 
pain." 

You will like " The Prayer of John Muir," which Odell 
Shepard wrote and which we quote by permission from the 
Book News Monthly: 

'" Let me sleep among the shadows of the mountain when I die, 
In the murmur of the pines and sliding streams, 

Where the long day loiters by 

Like a cloud across the sky, . * 

And the night is calm and musical with dreams. 

"Lay me down within a canyon of the mountains, far away, 

In a valley filled with dim and rosy light; 
Let me hear the streams at play 
Through the vivid, golden day, 

And a voice of many waters in the night. 



i;o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Let me lie where glinting rivers ramble down the slanting glade 

Under bending alders garrulous and cool, 
Where the sycamores have made 
Leafy shrines of shifting shade, 

Tremulous above the ferned and pebbled pool. 

" I have loved the lordly eagle far aloft against the skies 
And his shadow trailing through the pines below, 
And I love the filmy dyes 
Of the darting dragon-flies 

Skimming, swift as light, the river's foaming flow. 

" Now I draw my dreams about me and I leave the darkling plain 
Where the soul forgets to soar and learns to plod. 

I will go back home again 

To the kingdoms of the rain, 
Where I shall be nearer heaven, nearer God. 

" Where the rose of dawn comes earliest across the miles of mist, 

Boon-fellow of the stardawn and sunrise, 
I shall keep a lover's tryst 
With the gold and amethyst, 

With the stars for my companions in the skies." 

John Burroughs is the most lovable saunterer now living 
in America. He was born on a farm and brought up among 
the woods and streams. When he was a young man he 
read a volume of Audubon, and that inspired him to go 
forth and watch the birds and to note more carefully their 
nests and calls. He accepted a clerkship at Washington. 
" How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of 
me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of 
summer fields and woods," he exclaimed. As soon as he 
could free himself he exchanged the iron wall for a large 
window overlooking the Hudson, and the vault for a vine- 
yard. Since then he has lived daily in the woods, but he 



"THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST" 171 

has taken with him from the city his love of men. " If I 
name every bird I see in my walk," he once said, " describe 
its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts or details about 
the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is interested. But if 
I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own life, 
— show what it is to me and what it is in the landscape and 
the season, — then do I give my reader a live bird and not a 
labeled specimen." And in another place he said : " I can- 
not bring myself to think of my books as ' works,' because 
so little work has gone into the making of them. It has 
all been play. I have gone a-fishing or camping or canoe- 
ing, and the writing of the book was only a second and 
finer enjoyment of my holiday in the fields or woods." 
And just because of his " finer enjoyment " our reading of 
Burroughs is very much as if we ourselves went into the 
woods arm-in-arm with the dear old story-teller of nature. 
Helen Gray Cone has told us what his lifetime of saunter- 
ing has meant to him in the following exquisite verse: 

" Long since he said — beloved John of Birds ! — 

* Serene I wait ; my own will come to me.' 
In large fulfillment of the sweet wise words, 

His own has come to him from sky and sea, 
Mountain and stream ; his own, in sun-warmed hours 

And all clean joys that taste of the kind earth ; 
June strawberries, and the nestling April flowers; 

The thrush's reverie, and the robin's mirth; 
His own, all songs and wings of the round year, 

And every furry creature soft and shy; 
His own, the winter sunshine white and clear, 

And the far hills like memories in the sky; 
His own, hived honey of all fair things known — 
And all our hearts forevermore his own ! " 

In his age he summed up his lifelong joy as a saunterer 



172 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

in beautiful prose which is very much the echo of the prayer 
of John Muir in verse : 

" I have loved to feel the grass under my feet and the 
running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the 
tree-tops has always been music to me, and the face of the 
fields has often comforted me more than the faces of men. 
I am in love with this world because by my constitution I 
have nestled lovingly into it. It has been home. It has 
been my point of lookout into the universe. I have not 
bruised myself against it, nor tried to use it ignobly. I 
have tilled the soil; I have gathered its harvests. I have 
waited upon its seasons, and have always reaped what I 
have sown. While I delved I did not lose sight of the sky 
overhead. While I gathered bread and meat for my body, 
I did not neglect to gather its bread and meat for my soul. 
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, felt the 
sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench 
of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty 
and joy waited upon my goings and comings.'' 

There was another of these great saunterers, who too 
wandered for over fifty years among us. This was Louis 
Agassiz. You have read Longfellow's poem about how 
" Nature, the kind old nurse," took him away from his 
home in the Alps to read " the story-book " that the Father 
had written: 

" Come wander with me," she said, 
" Into regions yet untrod ; 
And read what is still unread 
In the manuscripts of God." 

And he wandered away and away 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 



" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 173 

Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe. 

So enraptured did he become with the wonderful song 
that it is not strange that he should tell the lecture manager 
who tempted him, " I have no time to make money." 

Thoreau himself was another saunterer. He did not go 
far, but he was always on pilgrimage. He said that if one 
is " a free man," having settled all his affairs, then he is 
ready for a walk. He too did not care to make money, 
more than to be able to live honestly and pay his debts. He 
measured a man's worth by the number of things that he 
was strong enough to go without, and he even threw away 
the geological specimens on the shelf in his cottage at Wal- 
den Pond because the time it took every day to dust them 
off robbed him of time for his sauntering. 

The most unique saunterer we ever had in this country 
was "Johnny Appleseed." I have for some time been 
searching for some adequate account of this singular man, 
and have finally found one by Frank B. McAllister in the 
Youth's World, from which the following paragraphs are 
largely taken. 

" JOHNNY APPLESEED " 

If you had stood, on a bright day some one hundred 
years ago, by the banks of the Ohio River, you might have 
seen a strange procession coming down stream. You would 
have seen two birch-bark canoes securely lashed together 
and piled high with leathern bags brimming full of apple- 
seeds, and in the midst of the strange craft a small wiry 
man with long, dark hair, keen black eyes, and a scanty 
beard that had never known the razor. On his head rested 



174 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

a tin dipper, while his body was clad in tattered garments 
that had once done duty as coffee-sacks. 

Whenever the children in front of some lone frontier 
cabin glimpsed this queer sight they rushed inside and an- 
nounced with glee: 

" O mother, Johnny Appleseed's coming ; may we go 
down to the river and meet him when he lands ? " Al- 
though the visitor was as odd a specimen of humanity as 
the wilderness afforded, he was known as one of the kind- 
liest of men, and no one was afraid of him. 

When Johnny came ashore he would look about him for 
soil that was rich and loamy, and then he would begin to 
plant his apple-seeds. Sometimes he would cover consid- 
able tracts with his plantings, putting in as many as sixteen 
bushels of seed to the acre. He would stay as long as his 
stock of seed held out, and then would disappear as un- 
ceremoniously as he had come, only to return after a few 
weeks or months with another load. 

He never forgot the orchards he had planted. When 
the trees were partly grown, he returned to prune them year 
after year, and to repair the slight brush fences he had built 
to keep out the deer and other animals that might nip the 
tender sprouts. Many of the trees he disposed of to farm- 
ers for transplanting, and in some cases he would sell an 
entire orchard on the spot he had originally chosen. If the 
customer was poor, as most of the pioneers were, he could 
have the trees for nothing, or Johnny would take any old 
piece of clothing in exchange. If a customer wanted to 
buy, the price of each tree was invariably a " fippetnny-bit," 
and immediate payment was never required. Johnny usu- 
ally took a note from the customer, and of such promises- 



"THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST" 175 

to-pay he collected a goodly number during his career, but 
it is not on record that he ever tried to collect any of them, 
apparently considering, like Mr. Micawber, that the trans- 
action was completed when the note was written. 

When he could not travel by water he went on foot, carry- 
ing his precious seeds in leathern bags slung across his back. 
Occasionally he would press into service some decrepit horse 
that he had saved from cruel treatment by purchasing it 
with his slender income. Every autumn he would start out 
in a diligent search of the woods and clearings for such 
strays or cast-offs, that he might care for them till they died 
of old age, or he could transfer them to some new owner, 
the sole condition of the transfer being humane treatment. 
Johnny never sold any of the poor old nags he had collected. 

Besides apple-seed, Johnny planted seeds of many medi- 
cinal herbs in the woods through which he traveled. Doc- 
tors were few and far between in the wilderness, and 
Johnny wished to make up for this lack as far as he could. 
By his efforts hundreds of miles of forests were carpeted 
with fennel, catnip, hoarhound, pennyroyal, rattlesnake 
root, and other of the " simples " that our ancestors used 
in sickness. 

Johnny was fervently religious, and was always ready 
to talk with friends or strangers on high themes. His own 
little library of religious books, purchased with that part of 
his income not given away or used to relieve suffering, was 
freely lent to all who would take the books and read them. 
When his supply of whole books gave out, he would divide 
two or three of them into pieces and leave one chapter at 
each farm, to remain till his next visit, when he would ex- 
change it for another chapter. The only difficulty with 



176 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

the scheme was that the readers rarely got the chapters in 
their proper order, but that troubled neither them nor their 
queer librarian. 

No one could have been more tender to all forms of ani- 
mal life than was Johnny Appleseed. In this respect he 
reminds us of good Saint Francis of Assisi, with his ap- 
preciation of all nature as God's works, and the birds as 
man's little brothers. On one occasion he even put out 
his camp-fire that the smoke might not destroy the myriads 
of mosquitoes who hovered near it. Another time he found 
that a bear and her cubs were asleep in a hollow log against 
which he had built his fire, so, not wishing to disturb them, 
he quenched the flame and slept that night in the snow. A 
rattlesnake once bit him, and he killed the venomous crea- 
ture, an action he always after regretted. " Poor fellow," 
said Johnny ; " he only touched me, while I, in an ungodly 
passion, put the heel of my scythe in him and went home.' , 
Surely a kind heart beat beneath this man's coffee-sack; if 
he had lived in the early centuries, the painters would have 
drawn the tin dipper on his head as a halo. 

His journeyings over Ohio and Indiana, carrying his 
bags of apple-seed and his tattered books, continued till 
the very week of his death. When he was taken sick in the 
home of a settler at Fort Wayne, he was on his way to re- 
pair the fence about an orchard he had set out some years 
before near the western frontier of the state. The pioneers 
in a large section of the Middle West mourned him as one of 
the strangest but one of the best friends they had. It was 
estimated that he had left behind fully one hundred thousand 
acres of orchards planted as a testimony to his love for 
nature and for his fellow man. 

Who was Johnny Appleseed? His real name was Jona- 



" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 177 

than Chapman, and he was born in Boston in 1775. He 
had followed the Revolutionary veterans over the Alle- 
ghanies, and conceiving his life mission to be the planting 
of apple trees, as theirs was the wielding of the ax or the 
guiding of the plow, he served a great and useful purpose 
in making men and women contented in their new homes 
on the frontier. 

No one knows just where he is buried, but no one doubts 
that it is somewhere in the woods he loved, where the birds 
sing and the squirrels play, and where the breezes of spring 
waft the sweet odors of blossoming branches. There 
is an old poem that the children in Mansfield still learn, 
one verse of which runs: 

And if they inquire whence came such trees, 
Where not a bough once swayed in the breeze, 
The reply still comes as they travel on, 
" Those trees were planted by Appleseed John." 

And now every springtime in the Western Reserve where 
he wandered the air is full of fragrance and blossoms and 
through the long summer the fruit swells and ripens on the 
trees and in the golden autumn men and women go forth 
where the fruit shines like lanterns and fill their baskets 
with food. And the orchards of Ohio sift down their soft 
petals somewhere on the grave of Jonathan Chapman, the 
seed-planter and saunterer. 

THE PLACE OF MONEY IN LIFE 

All these instances remind us again that the motive-power 
of life is interest. » 

" Suppose that when he leaves school," says R. H. Quick, 
an English schoolman, " we wish to forecast a lad's future. 



178 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

What shall we try to find out about him? No doubt we 
shall ask what he knows, but this will not be the main thing. 
His skill would interest us, and also the state of his health. 
But what we should ask, first and foremost, is this: 
' Whom does he admire and imitate ? What does he care 
about?'" 

If your interest is business and only business, then your 
future course is clear, but if business is to you simply the 
means by which you get the chance to pursue what is your 
real interest, then you do not want to let business take more 
than its share of your life. What do you care for success 
in business if for you that does not mean success in life? 
" It makes no difference how far you go," Joseph Lee re- 
minds you, "if you leave your heart behind; in that case 
you may as well turn back and start again." Otherwise, 
you are simply a squirrel in a cage. 

The limitation of the money-fever is that it makes one 
wholly a hired man. Would you wish to finish life and 
then have to confess that you never did a hand's turn except 
for wages? Who is more foolish than the man who is 
"getting a living" and going to "live" some time? 

Sam Walter Foss used to tell about two people, one of 
whom lived solely for money and the other did not. The 
man had what he wanted : 

" Wen he wanted for pie — he had pie, 
Wen he wanted for sass — he had sass." 



The woman 



Wen she wanted for pie — she had beans, 
Wen she wanted for sass — she had 'lasses/* 



As for the man, 



" THERE'S NO CLOCK IN THE FOREST " 179 

" Guess he was a great man an' all that — I dunno ; 

Guess he was — I dunno — a big banker. 
But for jest sich a feller like him 

A critter like me doesn't hanker. 
For he didn't seem to know that warm heart-blood is red ; 

All he knew was that gol' coin is yeller ; 
An' there warn't no juice in the ol' rascal's heart, 

An' there warn't no soul in the feller. 
An' so, w'en the ol' critter died, 

There warn't no hullabaloo ; 
An' his neighbors was all satisfied — ! " 

But as for the woman, " A'nt Haskett " everybody called 
her: 

" She was great on lobelyer an' pennyrial tea 

An' a wonder on sassafras bitters ; 
An' she knew roots an* arbs, an' could bile 'em an' mix 

So's to cure all sick human critters ; 
An' her funeral was helt in her yard, 

'Cause her house was too small for the crowd, . . . 
But measured by tears at her grave 

Her life was the biggest success. 
There warn't no style an' no show-off at all, 

But 'twas easy to cry at her funeral." 

If you want something better than money, then let your 
motto be that of some boys and girls I know who belong 
to an Achievement Club: 

" I Want the Money 
To Get the Time 
To Get the Things 
That Money Can't Buy." 

You can test the value of your interests, Ella Lyman 
Cabot thinks, by asking yourself of any interest five ques- 
tions : 



180 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" i Does it rouse and warm me ? 

2 Does it overflow into other interests? 

3 Does it call out the best in me? 

4 Does it seem to serve a real need? 

5 Is it progressive and fruitful ? " 



XXI 

TIDE-MARKS 

YOU have seen the tide-marks on the shore. Did you 
ever see any in a boy's room? I don't mean marks 
made by water; I mean the marks made where the boy left 
off. 

Look around you. Here is his stamp collection, and you 
can tell by the dust upon it that he hasn't opened it lately. 
In the closet is a box of minerals, but they were put there 
because he has tired of them. I presume you might some- 
times find a quarterly leaflet in his drawer that would show 
where he stopped studying his Sunday-school lessons. 
Even his badges on his bureau may tell when he made his 
latest athletic record. 

Some of these tide-marks are encouraging. They show 
that the boy has not only outgrown his past, but has grown 
out into larger and better things. He may have forsaken 
his stamps to take up experiments in chemistry, and left his 
minerals to do something with the blow-pipe. 

But this is not always so, and as we grow older these 
things we leave behind are often like last year's birds'-nests, 
things that once were filled with the beautiful and melodious 
but now empty. Go into some living-rooms and what do 
you see? The closed piano stands like driftwood thrown 
up by the tide. The glass-covered books are like dried 
articles in a museum, for nobody uses them or adds to their 

181 



1 82 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

number. Even the pictures on the wall show that the peo- 
ple have stopped looking for ways of making the home 
beautiful. 

You can notice this in talking with some people. Their 
conversation is as full of deserted enthusiasm as a Novem- 
ber tree is of old birds' nests. They are always talking 
about the things they used to care for, with a lazy sigh. 
Everything they say is full of might-have-beens. You look 
in vain for a fresh interest as you do for a fresh Mayflower 
in November. You wonder if they are as tired of them- 
selves as you are of them. 

Such an one is like the old colored woman who when 
asked whither she was going answered : " I ain't goin' 
nowhar. I'se done bin whar Fse goin'." 

" I remember once," says Helen Thoburn, " talking with 
a girl about joining a certain class. * Oh, but I've grad- 
uated,' said she, implying a completeness of education not 
to be tampered with further. ' From what ? ' I asked in- 
nocently, wondering if she had had college work after all. 
'•From the eighth grade,' was her reply. I thought of a 
dear old seventy-three-year-young friend of mine who is 
just beginning to study Spanish this year." She wants it, 
no doubt, to use in her castles in Spain, which she still 
keeps up. 

Certain people try to conceal the fact that they have 
stopped growing by pretense. Woodrow Wilson put it 
tersely : " Some folks grow. Others swell." 

How about your tide-marks? Are they signs of the ebb- 
ing or the rising tide? Are they like the snail's shell, that 
makes a hard roof under which you must crawl forever, 
or are they like the shell of the chambered nautilus, in which 
you " leave the past year's dwelling for the new, steal with 



TIDE-MARKS 183 

soft step its shining archway through, build up its idle door, 
stretch in your last-found home, and know the old no 
more?" Mr. H. G. Wells, the novelist, said of a friend 
of his : " You can wake up in the night and hear him 
grow." That is my own ambition. I want to grow for- 
ever. I would be glad to have as my epitaph that which 
was carved over the grave of Green, the English historian, 
" He died learning." What is the use of being immortal 
if one is growing smaller all the time? Indeed, how can 
one endure the thought of living forever unless he can grow 
forever ? 

If you ask me how people come to rest content with their 
old tide-marks, I can only give the explanation which was 
given by the little girl for falling out of bed. She said: 
" I went to sleep too near the place where I got in." 

THE BEE-MAN OF ORN 

A year ago last summer I traveled for several days with 
a male quartet appearing at community Chautauquas con- 
ducted by the University of Wisconsin. To one of them 
who had joined the company on leaving high school, I con- 
fessed my inability to see how any one could make a life- 
work of such a dreary, homeless occupation. He replied 
that he shared the same opinion, and stated that, although 
now rather beyond the student age, he was going to enter 
college and study for a profession. As I watched him with 
sympathetic interest thereafter, I was forced to the conclu- 
sion that he would be unlikely to carry out his resolve or to 
make a success at any profession. He had entirely lost the 
reading habit, he was not even alertly observant and he was 
simply frittering away the present. 

I wonder if you have ever read Frank R. Stockton's 



184 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

amusing story about the bee-man of Orn. This bee-man 
was a curious little old fellow who lived in a valley and 
kept bees, of which he was so fond that he would carry a 
comb of their honey in each pocket. Some ill fairy per- 
suaded him that he was a changeling and so he started off, 
with a bee-hive on his back, to find out what sort of person 
he had been transformed from. He was sure that what- 
ever it was he would feel such a fascination for it that he 
would be changed back into his rightful shape. So in turn 
he met a nobleman, a robber, and a man of mystery, but he 
felt no great drawing toward any of them. As soon as he 
saw a baby though he made up his mind, that it was from 
a baby that he had been changed into a bee-man. So he 
asked to become a baby. His wish was granted. Sixty 
years after somebody inquired what had become of this 
baby, and it was found that he was now a curious little old 
fellow who lived in a valley and kept bees ! 

FRANK MANANA 

This story reminds me of my friend Frank. I will not 
tell you what his last name is, but I think it might be Man- 
ana, which I believe* is Spanish for To-morrow. He has 
more projects than anybody else I have known, but he is al- 
ways postponing carrying them out. He has so many plans 
that just as you are about to join him in one of them, you 
meet him coming home from an old one. He has already 
forgotten about the one you are interested in, in his en- 
thusiasm about one that is still more new. The other day 
he was about to build himself a tree-house. As I was going 
over with a hammer and saw to meet him, I found him tak- 
ing down the cords of an unfinished wireless telegraph to 
use in making a frame for an enormous glider. He had 



TIDE-MARKS 185 

long ago forgotten all about the tree-house. His mother 
says he would starve to death if it were not for the fact 
that although he forgets to eat his breakfast in the morn- 
ing, he will eat his dinner at noon thinking it is the supper 
he is planning to eat at night. 

He acts the same way about the tasks that are set him 
by others. In school he misses his geometry because he has 
already begun to read the chemistry that he does not start 
until next year. I suppose he has sampled every subject 
in the course, but he ranks on the whole as a sophomore be- 
cause, while he knows a little about some senior studies, he 
has not yet passed his examination in freshman algebra. 

Frank has many enthusiasms, yet I can hardly call him 
enthusiastic in spirit. Like the bee-man, he is always sure 
he was meant to be something else than what he is. He 
thinks he deserves to be rich and famous and admired. 
Yet if he were made any or all of these by some magic, it 
would not be long before he would lose them all and be- 
come the same old Frank Manana again. The only dif- 
ference will be this, that while at twenty he is talking about 
what his energy is going to do for him, at forty he will be 
complaining about what his luck has made of him. But will 
it be fair to blame it on luck? 

I am reminded of the following story. The Devil once 
sent out three of his strongest angels to corrupt the world. 
One went forth with the message, " There is no heaven," 
and tried to discourage the heart of man. Some were dis- 
heartened, but most plodded on bravely to do their best, even 
though immortality was taken away. The second went 
broadcast saying, " There is no hell," hoping to lead men 
astray by taking away their fear of punishment for sin. 
Some yielded, but most preferred to live nobly with them- 



1 86 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

selves. The third evil spirit went everywhere saying, 
" There is no hurry," and the world was ruined by post- 
ponement. 

BEING YOUR OWN FORTUNE-TELLER 

You know how implicitly some persons trust the sooth- 
saying clairvoyants and palm-readers. You yourself have 
often wished you could go to a prophet who would reveal 
your future to you. You do not need any soothsayer to do 
this. You can be your own prophet. It is quite possible 
for you to foresee at least the next few years of your life. 

The rule for such soothsaying is very simple. It is 
this : you are going to be what you are now becoming. 

You have wondered whether you will ever be able to travel. 
Travel, of course, is for the purpose of seeing. Are you 
ready to see? You can carry nothing away from Europe 
unless you bring something to Europe. So unless you are 
on the way to knowing what to see in Europe it may be 
safely prophesied that your travel will never amount to 
much. 

You want to know whether you will be rich. Now to- 
be really rich means to have rich uses for money. Have 
you any such uses? Could you spend money if you had it 
in ways that would make your life worth while? Or can 
you think of nothing you would prefer to have more than 
fine clothes, automobiles and expensive dinners? If not, 
it may be prophesied that you will never be really rich. 

You would like to know if you will always have plenty of 
friends. Have you plenty now? Are you a good friend- 
ship-maker? Unless you are, it can be safely foretold that 
when you are older and friendships are not made so readily, 
you will not have many left. 



TIDE-MARKS 187 

And how about having a happy life? Well, everybody 
has some sorrowful events in his life, but events, as some- 
body has said, are like clay; we take them and mold out 
of them what we will. If you are selfish and demanding 
now, you may know that your marriage will not be a happy 
one, because no matter what kind of life you have that kind 
of nature cannot have a happy marriage. If, as you look 
about you, you do not like what you see, you will never see 
what you will like, for your point of view can never find 
what it likes. If you bear your present troubles with groans 
and bitterness, it makes little difference whether you meet 
few or many, those you do have will be enough to darken 
your days. 

Not only can you do your own fortune-telling, but since 
your life is in your own keeping, you can determine its own 
good fortune. 

To do this, I have found it helpful to breathe frequently 
this prayer of Louis Uhtermeyer's : 

" From sleek contentment keep me free, 

And fill me with a buoyant doubt. 
From compromise and things half-done, 

Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride: 
And when, at last, the fight is won, 

God, keep me still unsatisfied. 



XXII 
BIG-BROTHERHOOD 

THERE is nothing a really big man likes any better 
than to answer the interested questions of a youth. 
Dorothy Canfield Fisher tells of a certain Professor 
Quincy, who was the leading teacher of science in a certain 
college. He had no use for the " smart Aleck " and he 
seemed to know by instinct the difference between idle, 
trivial chatter and the real desire to know. She says : " I 
did not happen to see it myself, but I was brought up on 
the laughing account of his flight early one summer morn- 
ing, through the streets of the gossipy little community, clad 
in dressing-gown and slippers, and leading by the hand a 
little boy in night-drawers. The child was the son of his 
next-door neighbor, and had pattered over to the profes- 
sor's solitary breakfast table to show him a beetle, and ask 
something about its anatomy. Although nobody else would 
have made much of the question, it showed, according to 
Professor Quincy, so intelligent and original a turn of mind 
that he was electrified, and, leaving his cup of coffee un- 
tasted, he sprang to his feet, took the little inquirer straight 
to the big microscope in the laboratory, and gave him his^ 
first lesson in entomology." 

When the Agassiz Association was started in the pages 
of St. Nicholas many years ago, the scientific questions of 
children were presented to the greatest scholars, and they 
took pleasure in answering them without charge. Perhaps 

188 



BIG-BROTHERHOOD 189 

one reason was that some of these questions were so sug- 
gestive that they set the scientists themselves to thinking. 
For example, when one boy asked, What makes a cat purr ? 
the head of the department of zoology in a state university 
had to say he didn't know, and that nobody knew, but he 
would try to find out. Here we have helpfulness and mod- 
esty combined. Dr. Stejneger was asked if the pits or 
holes in a snake's head were ears. He answered, " I don't 
know, and perhaps may never know." But he said he 
would keep on studying. A little girl asked why grass- 
hoppers were more attracted to her when she wore a white 
than a colored dress in the fields. Dr. A. S. Packard 
praised her for her " excellent observation " and wrote her 
a long letter on what he had learned of the color-prefer- 
ence of butterflies in Switzerland. 

HOW GREAT MEN HAVE ENCOURAGED THE 

YOUNG 

The first call to boys is often the encouraging voice of a 
friend. Horace Mann, the great educator, was encouraged 
to go to college when he was fifteen by meeting a young girl 
who had actually studied Latin. Bayard Taylor, making a 
boyish collection of autographs, was stimulated to hope he 
might become a writer by receiving a kind letter from 
Charles Dickens. Daniel Webster's deepest longings were 
stirred riding in a sleigh in the moonlight, when his father 
proposed the sacrifice by which he should send him to Dart- 
mouth College. Abraham Lincoln, in his homespun, was 
led to believe he could be somebody by reading a borrowed 
books, Weems' " Life of Washington." Dwight L. Moody, 
an unprepossessing clerk in a shoe-store in Boston, unmoved 
by the brilliant sermons of his pastor, Dr. Kirk, was made 



i 9 o THE YOUNG FOLKS* BOOK OF IDEALS 

a new man by the touch on the shoulder of his Sunday 
school teacher, Edward Kimball. It is said that William 
McKinley was drawn to the work which made him famous 
by the encouragement of Rutherford B. Hayes, who urged 
him to make one great subject, the tariff, his special re- 
search. Charles Spurgeon was taken on a walk through his 
father's garden when a small boy by a minister who inter- 
ested himself in him and who on his return to the house 
prophesied that this boy would become a famous preacher. 
He suggested a certain hymn which he declared ought to 
be sung when the lad first entered a great metropolitan pul- 
pit; that hymn was given out by Spurgeon before many 
years in a great temple in London. 

No great scholar was ever more noted for his interest 
in young people than was the noble and gentle General Rob- 
ert E. Lee during those later years of his life when he was 
at the head of Washington and Lee University. " To the 
day of his death," says Thomas Nelson Page, " the entrance 
of a child was a signal for the dignified soldier to unbend, 
and among his latest companions in his retirement, when 
he was perhaps the most noted Captain in the world, were 
the little sunbonneted daughters of the professors of the 
college of which he was President." 

H. B. Furgusson, now representative in Congress from 
New Mexico, was once a lad, in that institution. A. J. Mc- 
Kelway has recently reported his experience in an article in 
Harper's Weekly, in Mr. Furgusson' s own words : 

" I think I was the poorest boy in college ; my clothes were 
shabby, and I shrank from contact with my fellow students. 
I made a bargain with a farmer living a few miles from 
Lexington, getting a small hut to live in and my meals in 
return for a certain amount of work about the farm. I 



BIG-BROTHERHOOD 191 

walked to college, studied late at night, kept severely to 
myself, and worshiped General Lee afar off. 

" It was not long before General Lee noticed me, among 
the hundreds of students that thronged to Lexington. I 
suppose that he understood my loneliness and my unwill- 
ingness to associate with the other students so long as I 
could not do so on equal terms. So one day he stopped me 
and asked me what I did with myself between recitations, 
seeing that I lived in the country and did not have a room 
in the college. I told him that I went from one class- 
room to another until I found one vacant and studied there 
until my next class. ' Now that is very inconvenient/ said 
General Lee. ' I have a little office and always a good fire. 
You will not be disturbed in your studies if you will sit 
there, so come to my office to-morrow.' 

" That was an invitation not to be refused, so the next 
morning I found that General Lee had a chair and desk 
provided for me near the fire in his office, and there we 
sat together day after day throughout the session, he at his 
work and I at mine, and I the very poorest boy in the college. 

" One day I had such a bad cold that I was afraid to go 
out in the wintry weather and walk the long miles to college. 
So I stayed in my little hut. That afternoon I was aston- 
ished to see General Lee dismounting from Traveler at the 
door. I invited him in; he complimented me on how nice 
I was fixed up and how good a place it was to study, away 
from the distractions of the college, told me he had missed 
me from his office and was afraid I was sick, and so had 
come to see about me. 

" Once afterward he showed me a kindness. I could not 
afford to go home in vacation, so hired myself out to the 
farmer for the summer. One day I was helping thresh 



192 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

wheat, and if you have ever stood under the threshing- 
machine, separating the chaff and wheat from the straw, 
you may know how grimy and dirty I was when I looked 
up and saw General Lee, on Traveler again, with another 
gentleman on horseback. The General beckoned to me and 
I went up to him just as I was. He spoke of the usefulness 
of farm work, but said he had found something for me to 
do that would perhaps be more congenial, which turned 
out to be teaching a school in the neighborhood during the 
summer months, the money I earned helping me famously 
through the next year's term." 

The Civil War gave birth to two men of sorrows, Abra- 
ham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. One was taken up sud- 
denly, like Elijah, as if in a chariot of fire; the other re- 
mained, like a gentle Elisha to help heal the wounds of a 
reunited people. Both of them loved young people, and our 
sweetest memories in American history are of these two, the 
one saving a young sleeping sentinel from death or sitting 
by a dying boy in a hospital, the other giving the last years 
of his life to quiet, patient service in training his soldier- 
boys who came to college to become loyal citizens to the 
Republic. 

The greater the man, the more safe and confident you 
may feel to approach him for help or counsel. 



XXIII 

HOW TO TALK WELL 

""^ITHAT do you talk about at meal-times at your 
* * house ? " a bright high-school girl was asked by her 
chum. 

" We don't talk ; we complain. We complain about the 
food and the hard times and Aunt Maria's sore knee." 

That is about the catalogue at many houses. Yet meal- 
time in many modern families is the longest consecutive 
season in the day when the whole household is together. It 
is the only opportunity for real enjoyment of each other and 
friendship, and yet how often the hour is wasted or worse. 
To complain or to quarrel or to read the paper by one's 
self is surely not the best use that can be made of this one 
household meeting-place. 

Even if one didn't care to get acquainted and to enjoy 
the members of one's own home intelligent table talk would 
be worth while as a preparation for sitting at others' tables. 
For a really good talker is welcome everywhere, and an in- 
terested listener is a rare delight. Only those who have 
had good practice in talking and listening know how to do 
it well. Even teachers say that they can tell the difference 
between a youth brought up in a home where there has 
been good talk and another, by the range of information 
and interest that each displays. 

The one rule that ought to apply to all table talk is that 

193 



i 9 4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

it should be cheerful. In one household of which I know 
every one stands in his place and joins in singing a verse of 
a song before sitting down. In another each one is ex- 
pected to bring " a happy thought " to the table and to pre- 
sent it at the first opportunity. One anti-bilious father 
makes it a practice on his infrequent visits home to cherish 
all the good stories he has heard during the week before 
and thus try to make all the family feel as good as he 
does. In still another household the father makes it such 
a practice to dismiss everything that is unpleasant that the 
younger children call the meal " the laughing hour." 

In order to guarantee good cheer every one should con- 
tribute. Dr. Luther H. Gulick, giving advice to people 
who are low-spirited, advises them always to be ready with 
a new joke at table, and to " tell it even if it hurts you " ; he 
adds: " It won't hurt you." Of course if the table is not 
the place to complain neither is it the place to blame, so that 
it would do us good if instead of thinking and expressing 
at that place the defects we have noticed in our brothers 
and sisters we should save up pleasant words for that oc- 
casion and make it the place where praise is always spoken. 
This may be hard sometimes, but " it won't hurt you." 

Good talk to be ensured must be pre-arranged. An Irish 
professor urges that at each table there should be what the 
Greeks called " a symposiarch," to " kick off." In some 
families an actual weekly program is announced. In a 
household that we know of a series of subjects is printed 
on a bunch of cards, like a calendar, and one of these is 
turned up each morning on a rack that sets in the middle 
of the table. Such seriousness of planning is not necessary, 
but there should be enough plan so that the fellow who 
has needed to be dragged out of bed in order to get him 



HOW TO TALK WELL 195 

to school in time shall want to get down to the table in time 
not to miss something interesting. 

HOW TO TALK IN SOCIETY 

Benson, the essayist, tells of a friend of his who makes 
herself easy in conversation by thinking beforehand of 
subjects in alphabetical order, but, as he adds, if you should 
get up some appropriate remarks on " algebra, archery, and 
astigmatism " it might prove rather hard to drag them in. 
He tells of another who, having been struck in the presence 
of a charming lady by entire absence of mind when he was 
trying to select the most delightful thing to say, thereupon 
invented a remark that would apply to all persons of any 
age and of either sex under any circumstances whatever, 
but as he would never reveal his precious possession to even 
the most ardent inquirers, the magic phrase perished with 
him. 

My own method has always been this: to ask a series 
of questions intended to find out what any stranger is in- 
terested in, and then just as soon as he looks animated en- 
courage him to talk along that line. For the sake of soci- 
ability it is not needful to be a fascinating talker. " If you 
cannot be an entertaining talker, you can/' says Mrs. Bur- 
ton Chance, " become such a flattering listener that no one 
will think of the other." For, as Jonathan Swift said, it is 
more important to be companionable than conversational. 

If one meets a person of acknowledged mental superior- 
ity, why should one wish to talk himself? Why expose 
one's crudities to criticism when one might learn so much 
during a brilliant hour of listening? With such an one, 
Professor J. P. Mahaffy says : " It is our social duty by 
intelligent questioning, by an anxiety to learn from him, to 



196 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

force him to condescend to our ignorance, or join in our 
fun, till his broader sympathies are awakened, and he plays 
with us as if we were his children." 

But if you must talk — though one seldom needs to, if 
one's acquaintance is as fond of himself as most men are 
— then talk about something that interests you, from the 
personal standpoint, being careful not to be boastful or too 
confidential. After a very few moments you will either 
discover that your acquaintance is alert or restless. If he 
is restless, it will mean that he is anxious to get another 
chance to talk about himself. And you will soon learn that 
a bore is a man who insists upon talking about himself 
when you wish to talk about yourself. But if he is inter- 
ested you will soon lose yourself in your subject and you 
may make a real contribution to his pleasure. For you can 
learn to talk. There is at least one subject upon which 
you can speak modestly, sympathetically, humorously, even 
eloquently. Gather your thoughts on that theme, and prac- 
tice whenever you get a chance. 

What Lucy Elliot Keeler says about little manners in 
conversation is so bright that I think you ought to know it. 
" The successful converser has a welcoming, good-natured, 
even joyous manner. She enunciates clearly, pronounces 
correctly, and avoids anything like screaming or shouting. 
She does not sit in the middle of the room, or talk much 
about herself. She does not shuffle her feet or crack her 
finger joints, she looks straight in your eyes and never 
seems to care what others beside yourself are saying and 
doing. She listens sympathetically, and never cuts off a 
story with, ' I know that ; isn't it good ? ' She remembers 
Sydney Smith's dictum never to talk more than half a min- 
ute without giving others a chance." 



HOW TO TALK WELL 197 

SUGGESTIONS AS TO TABLE TALK 

The following are taken from a leaflet by the writer, entitled 
" Table Talk in the Home." 

Things Seen. Curious characters; costumes of foreigners; dis- 
plays in shop windows; a new invention; the migration of birds, 
bird songs heard or early birds seen; indications of the change of 
the season. 

Here are some questions that may be asked to bring out observa- 
tion: 

What is the largest star you can see to-night? 

Why are two stars in the Dipper called pointers ? 

What color are crows' eggs? 

What use are crows to farmers? 

How does a dog know a stranger? 

What are some of the pets kept by sailors in our navy? 

Does a bird ever sail with his tail toward the wind? 

How can you tell an oak tree? 

Why is salt water not good for plants? 

What makes us sneeze? 

What is the purpose of holes in the young bark of a tree? 

Why does a duck never get wet? 

Another kind of questions may be propounded which have no 
direct connection with immediate observation, but which are 
thought-starters. Such are these: 

What makes a bee hum? 

Does a tadpole know he will lose his tail? 

Where are a frog's ears? 

How did a pig nearly cause a war? 

How did we get the umbrella? 

Why will a rug smother a fire? 

Things Read. From the newspaper: father's comment on the 
political news ; brother's " dope " on the sport situation ; sister's 
on the latest in fashions ; a new idea in science ; a fresh discovery ; 
a recipe for mother ; the brightest cartoon ; something from to-day's 
lesson in a school textbook ; a favorite poem ; novels or plays sum- 
marized. 

Famous Events. Keeping track of great anniversaries; dis- 



198 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

covering one significant event in each century since Christ, one 
each morning ; talking about one new country every month ; each 
member to pretend that he is a citizen of a different nation, and 
to be responsible to tell what is going on in his " native land." 

Hobbies. Arrange that each member have a chance in turn to 
tell the rest about what he is much interested in. " If a person 
liked anything, if he took snuff heartily," says Hazlitt of a certain 
company, " it was sufficient." 

Big Movements. There should be room at table to tell about 
betterment movements in the city or nation, such as the new play- 
ground; the Boy Scouts; what the Y. M. C. A. is doing; how to 
keep the streets clean and safe ; how the nation's wards, the Indians, 
are being taken care of ; what progress the Armenians or Belgians 
are making since the war, etc. 



XXIV 
HOME STUDY 

DOES home study pay? Look at this table that was 
prepared from investigating the habits of the high- 
school pupils of Iowa. There is quite a difference between 
the first and the last percentages of failure. 



URS A WEEK IN 


PERCENTAGE FAILING ONE 


HOME STUDY 


OR MORE TIMES 


0-4 


56 


5-8 


45 


9-12 


54 


13-16 


17 


17-20 






Nobody failed at all who studied at home as many as 
seventeen hours a week. 

The same authority investigated the relation between 
staying out evenings and failures in school. He found 
among those who spent four to seven evenings a week at 
home 55 failures as against 135 among those who stayed 
at home from none to three evenings a week. 

In this short chapter I want simply to take up a few 
practical considerations about improving the quality of our 
study at home. 

Perhaps your chief difficulty in school is that you have 
" a poor memory.'' Will it discourage you if I tell you 
that there is no known way of improving a memory? But 

199 



200 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

you can do this, which is far better, you can let your mem- 
ory alone, and put your effort on comprehending what is 
ivorth remembering. You may not improve your memory, 
but you can surely improve your method of study. You 
can learn to pick out what is worth while in each lesson, 
and then your memory will become not a garret where 
everything is piled but a store-room well arranged where 
you can find what you want when you want it. If you do 
this, you may never lead your class, but you will become 
something better, and that is, a thoughtful man. 

"What are you doing, Johnny?" asked the teacher, 
as Johnny paused in the midst of his recitation. 

" Thinking." 

"This is no place to think," cried the hurried teacher, 
as she gave out another question. Isn't it often so, that we 
are so busy reciting that we have no chance to think ? Yet 
the finest minds in school often do not recite very well, be- 
cause they are so busy trying to understand what the others 
are repeating like parrots. Dean Briggs of Harvard de- 
scribes the true student by telling of an old New England 
watchmaker who, when somebody took him a fine Swiss 
watch for repairs, used to say : " I can take her apart, and 
I can put her together again, and she may go; but some- 
how it seems as if the man that made one of them fine 
watches put in somethin' of his own that / can't under- 
stand; so I most ginerally give 'em a few drops of ile and 
lay 'em by in a drawer for two or three weeks, and most 
on 'em kind o' think it out for themselves." 

Perhaps the reason it doesn't pay to repair an Ingersoll 
watch is because it doesn't know how to " kind o* think it 
out for itself." And perhaps that is the reason a ready 
reciter doesn't always know how to do anything with what 



HOME STUDY 26I 

he has memorized. He can say what he has learned, but he 
cannot say what he has thought, for he has not done any 
thinking. 

The easy memorizer can pass any common-school or col- 
lege examination. He may be what we call " book- 
perfect," but as Nathaniel Fowler says, " The methodically 
perfect school-boy may grow into the automatic man." 
The memorizer may become merely a locked store-house, 
while the original thinker is a busy warehouse exchanging 
treasures every day. 

METHODS OF HOME STUDY 

Persons of different temperaments go about their work in 
different ways, but some suggestions may be helpful to the 
average individual in regard to home study. 

1. Choose the time when you feel the best fitted for 
work and make that your regular work-time. Some pupils 
come home in the afternoon feeling the momentum of the 
school still strong and like to sit down at once and get their 
work out of the way. Others like to reserve the evening 
for work. For most, a brief bit of exercise after school 
is best, and then a solid piece of work before supper. 

2. In choosing the study period, do not let the week-end 
alter the regularity of your plan. Because there is no 
school on Saturday and Sunday, many students do no study- 
ing after school on Friday, thinking that among the many 
hours before Monday morning a convenient hour for study 
will appear. That hour never comes. A delayed study- 
hour casts a shadow over each other hour until it is dis- 
posed of. 

3. Choose a secluded place for study. If there is a 
quiet corner in your home, find it. If not, ask to stay in 



202 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

school or go to the public library. Find a place where you 
cannot look out of the window and where you can hear the 
least noise from the street. You should be of strong 
enough mind to resist the temptation that comes from idlers 
who would not only lose their own good but spoil your 
work, but it is just as well to make resistance easier by 
getting where they cannot reach you. 

4. Place yourself in your study where you will not see 
attractive pictures, books, or playthings. Put yourself as 
nearly as possible in the conditions that you have in school, 
where there are no distractions. 

5. Set your task definitely before you. See clearly what 
you have to do in justice to yourself and your work. Then 
make it even more definite by setting yourself a stint or a 
time-limit, and be faithful to it. Don't shirk it by loitering, 
and don't overdo by exceeding it. 

6. Go about your work in the most direct way. Have 
all your books, papers, and implements right at hand. Take 
up your work in an orderly manner, the most difficult first. 
Try to remember how the teacher told you to go to work; 
make at least one definite conquest during the hour. Do 
this calmly, cheerfully, and briskly. 

7. Whenever you have something new to master, mus- 
ter up all that you already know that is in any way con- 
nected with it and use it to help understand and explain 
the new matter. 

Our ideas seem to be linked like the cars of a railroad 
train. They run in sets. And mastering a new idea con- 
sists in switching a train of old ideas so as to connect with 
a new engine on a fresh track. In order to remember 
something new it is good to do as we would do with a 
freight train whose load we wanted to carry along a new 



HOME STUDY 203 

track, with some new cars added. First, we link up all the 
old cars (ideas) we can to the new; next, we take on only 
one new car (idea) at a time, and finally we hitch on plenty 
of power (interest, health, concentration) to pull the load. 
8. " When you get through pumping, let go the handle." 
Study while you study, and play while you play. If you 
have done your best during the fair time that each subject 
is worth, then exercise, play, and comradeship will put you 
in better condition to meet the next day's test than if you 
become jaded in pondering over what you do not under- 
stand. 



XXV 

THE ENJOYMENT OF READING 

¥F reading needs to be argued for, it will probably win 
■* few friends, but if I can show you some treasures in 
books that you have never seen before, maybe you will 
some time thank me. 

Of course we read books to get knowledge. " All that 
men have devised, discovered, done, felt, or imagined, ,, 
Carlyle said, " lies recorded in books." 

" Think/' says a lover of books, " of all the great adven- 
turers, heroines, and wondermakers of the world, and ask 
yourself how much you know about them. Are you ac- 
quainted with ^Eneas the Wanderer, Aladdin of the Lamp, 
Cleopatra the Enchantress, Edward the Black Prince, 
Genghis Khan the Whirlwind, Helen the Beautiful, Isabella 
the Confident, Jones the Hero of the Sea, Louis XIV the 
Magnificent, Marquette the Missionary, Mary the Tragic 
Queen of Scots, Newcome the Gentleman, Parsifal the 
Saintly, Penelope the Faithful, Revere the Messenger of 
War, Robin Hood the Merry Huntsman, Saladin the Mag- 
nanimous, Scott the Story-Teller, Sindbad the Sailor, 
Ulysses the Rover, Xerxes the Great Persian? 

" Consider the Seven Wonders of the World — yea, the 
seventy — and say which of them is familiar to you: the 
Alhambra, that glorious ruin; the Great Wall of China, 
the Coliseum where gladiators fought, the sacred River 
Ganges, Holland's dykes which hold back the sea, the Sphinx 

204 



THE ENJOYMENT OF READING 205 

and its riddle, the Taj Mahal, the gem of India, Pompeii 
the buried city, and the Bastille, that terrible prison. 

" Think, too, of the castles of the air that never were built 
on land, but are more real to the imagination than Troy- 
Town or hundred-gated Thebes ; Doubting Castle, the Foun- 
tain of Perpetual Youth, the Land of Prester John, and the 
countries visited by Gulliver and Munchausen. 

" All these are hidden within the covers of books, and the 
books are the fairy godmothers that gladly open their doors 
to let you in to their magic country." 

Another advantage of good reading is that it makes one 
a master of effective speech. You want to talk good Eng- 
lish, but you don't want always to talk as if you were pick- 
ing your teeth. The person who speaks easily and force- 
fully, and not in a finicky, step-lightly-over-the-mud fash- 
ion, is the one who has unconsciously learned to talk well 
by reading a great deal that is well written. 

A third purpose of reading is that in books we find 
friends. The friends we make in books are always the 
same to us; they never mislead or betray, and if we come 
back to them after many years, having forgotten them 
meantime, they are still noble and true to us. " They 
open," Alexander Smith said, " of themselves at places 
wherein I have been happy. ... I am on easy terms with 
them, and feel that they are no higher than my heart." 

" There is a society continually open to us," Ruskin said, 
" of people who will talk to us as long as we like — talk to 
us in the best words they can choose, and of the things 
nearest their hearts. And this society can be kept waiting 
round us all day long — kings and statesmen lingering pa- 
tiently, not to grant audience, but to give it ! Will you go 
and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable boy," he 



206 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

pleads, " when you may talk with queens and kings, when 
all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its 
society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the 
chosen and the mighty, of every time and place? Do you 
ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, 
and you shall be." 

The greatest reason for reading is that the habit, specially 
if formed early, will give us inexhaustible and lifelong pleas- 
ure. There are many hours when we cannot talk or play, 
many hours when we shall be traveling, many hours when 
we are too tired to be otherwise busy, many hours when we 
need to be cheered or distracted or uplifted. For each of 
these hours there is a book; if we know our libraries well 
that book is always at hand. 

You will probably never gain the reading habit if you 
do not get it now. It is claimed that the average American 
after thirty reads nothing but the newspapers and the popu- 
lar novels. With such, says the Independent, " the intellec- 
tual clock stopped some time ago; their minds apparently 
froze when they should have begun to ripen and are like 
blocks of ice with a fish (or a single book) inside. Noth- 
ing now can get in." 

WHAT KIND OF BOOKS SHALL WE READ? 

Read good fiction. It takes us out of our own little 
lives, introduces us to brave and lovely people, shows us new 
possibilities of struggle or adventure or character and puts 
more romance into our daily living when we go back to it. 

Read travel and adventure. They open up to us new 
lands and races, inspire us with the careers of out-door men 
and make us resolve some day to see and know other lands 
than our own. 



THE ENJOYMENT OF READING 207 

Read biography. It offers us heroes to be like, and sug- 
gests bigger possibilities for our own future than otherwise 
we would dare to dream. 

Read about science and invention. Here we learn what 
adventure means nearer home, in the laboratory and the 
manufactory, and discover perhaps our own vocation. 

Read essays, because they are sparkling with humor, or 
keen in sharp observation, or wise as an old friend's counsel. 

Read poetry, especially aloud, for herein men have sung 
their songs of love or war or aspiration, and poetry is the 
rose garden of books. 

WHAT NOT TO READ 

I object to the cheap book. I mean, not cheap in price 
but cheap in substance. A volume that consists of a string 
of exciting incidents, with no clear descriptions of the char- 
acters and their motives, no background of places and 
things, nothing that makes the mind keen to catch a sharp 
idea or the feelings tense at the masterful portrayal — that 
is not a real book. It has as much relation to a book as 
soda water has to food. It is nothing but froth. " Every 
cheap book makes a cheap boy." 

" I can't see so much harm in one foolish book." The 
trouble is that for every book you read you have to leave 
some other one unread. 

I object to an improbable book. I do not object to im- 
probability where it is humorous. That is good satire. 
But when a writer tells a lot of improbabilities soberly, 
makes uneducated boys scientific inventors, has a group of 
unequipped school-boys make discoveries that expensive ex- 
peditions have not rivaled, tries to tell me that untrained 
lads become commissioned officers in the army or navy at 



208 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

sixteen years of age, I would rather go to sleep, for I can 
dream more exciting dreams than these. And of all im- 
probable books, I am getting most tired of those in which 
pert children reprove their elders, bring together broken 
families, reform the wicked, and are tiresomely happy and 
superior ever after. 

I object to a sentimental book. I like books of sentiment. 
I don't object to shedding tears in a good cause, but I am 
unwilling to wade in puddles of feeling. I don't want an 
abused heroine or a misunderstood hero, and I haven't time 
to watch the young suffer. I would rather read of heroines 
and heroes who laugh and shout and play, and who occa- 
sionally make funny or even pathetic mistakes. Avaunt the 
" sob-story." 

Good reading, so Lucy Elliot Keller says, is a good deal 
like good complexion. If one has always lived on simple 
food, played in the air and been regular in her habits — her 
complexion calls for no cosmetics. If, on the contrary, one 
had used improper food, slipped into irregular habits and 
refrained from strenuous exercise, her complexion needs — 
not cosmetics, but a thorough course of treatment. For 
good books or a good complexion most of us have to give 
hard work, self-denial, self-control. " You must get some- 
thing into your head before you can get anything out." 

"BUT I DON'T LIKE READING" 

When I hear boys or girls speak of being uninterested in 
books I am almost always sure it is because the wrong 
kind of books has been called to their attention. It may 
be that you will never care much for poetry or essays, but 
will become intensely interested in books of information. 
Once, say the authors of " Learning to Earn," a public li- 



THE ENJOYMENT OF READING 209 

brary decided and announced that hereafter it would pro- 
vide books suited to workmen's needs. It proceeded to load 
its shelves with ponderously technical books that no one 
but a professional engineer could read under standingly, and 
settled down in righteous contentment when the workmen 
did not flock to the library. But when the Marshall Field 
store in Chicago opened a branch library for its working 
people, these were the kind of books they furnished, and to 
read these, the clerks, young and old, crowded to borrow 
them : 

" The Story of Textiles," 

" Advertising as a Business/' 

" Precious Stones," 

" Furniture of Our Forefathers," 

" Magic of Dress," 

" Home Furnishings," 

" Garden Planning," 

" Electricity Simplified," 

" Book-keeping for Retailers," 

" How to Live on Twenty- four Hours a Day." 
If your interest is in any one of these lines, there is hardly 
a practical title like these that you will think you can afford 
to miss. The place for you is in the Useful Arts alcove of 
your public library. 

The following list of business books is furnished by the 
Ronald Press, 20 Vesey St., New York, from whom any of 
them may be secured: 

" Imagination in Business," by Lorin F. Deland. 
" Ginger Talks," by W. C. Holman. 
" Money and Banking," by John T. Holdsworth. 
" The Twelve Principles of Efficiency," by Harrington 
Emerson. 



210 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Principles of Scientific Management," by Frederick 
W. Taylor. 

"Getting the Most Out of Business," by E. St. Elmo 
Lewis. 

" Effective Business Letters," by Edward Hall Gardner. 

" The Working of the Railroads," by Logan G. Mc- 
Pherson. 

HOW TO READ 

Read with expectancy. If a book has been recommended 
to you, give its writer a fair chance. Get at his best. If 
he does not begin interestingly skip to the point where he 
gets into real action and join him there. 

Read with attention. Challenge every point. Fight the 
author at every step. Make him " show you." How long 
do you suppose it is since you have refused to swallow 
something you have read but haven't tested? 

Read with pluck. t Don't quit because the book is hard 
reading. Often the sweetest nuts are hardest to crack. In 
football it is just when practice ceases to be interesting that 
you begin to learn how to play. It is often so in reading. 

Read with a lead pencil. If the book is your own, mark in 
the margin with a line the things you like and with an inter- 
rogation point the things you question or wish to return to. 
On the blank pages at the back make a little index to the best 
places or write out a summary of the strongest facts. If the 
book is not yours, keep such a summary in a note-book of 
your own. " No book is worth anything," Ruskin said once, 
" which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has 
been read and reread, and loved, and loved again; and 
marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, 
as a soldier can seize the weapons he needs in an armory, or a 
housewife bring the spice she needs from her store." 



XXVI 
BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 

GOOD lists of good books are numberless. They all 
have this defect: different lists just as good could be 
easily prepared. There is no one " best " library for high- 
school boys and girls. 

The first list that follows has three good points. 

It is short. It names less than fifty books. 

It is descriptive. Something explanatory and interesting 
is told about each book. 

It is practical. It names not so much what you ought 
to like as what you are bound to enjoy. 

You will notice that more boys' books than girls' books 
are mentioned. Do you know why ? Simply because there 
are more good books for boys than for girls. But perhaps 
you remember that Edward Everett Hale once said : " All 
girls like boys' books. Almost no boys like girls' books." 

Many years ago De Quincey divided all libraries into two 
classes, " books of knowledge " and " books of power." 
This first is a list of books of power. Following it is a use- 
ful list of books of knowledge. 

Stories here are in the great majority. Young people of 
high-school age like two kinds of stories: tales of adven- 
ture and novels of romance. Usually the liking for the 
first comes before that for the second. The two kinds are 
mentioned here, and they are intermingled in the list, so that 
you will choose both kinds. 

211 



212 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

STORIES 

" Captains Courageous," by Rudyard Kipling. 

The story of a rich man's son who fell overboard from 
an ocean greyhound and who was picked up by a fishing 
dory off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The boy 
seemed to be no good until the keen, hard fishermen made 
a man of him. The book ends with the wonderful trip 
that the boy's father makes in a special car to reach his 
son. The book shows how a young millionaire was made 
worth while. 

" Little Women," by Louisa M. Alcott. 

Has a better story for girls ever been written? Four 
Yankee girls who made a brave, happy struggle together, 
and such girls — Meg, the home-maker, Beth, the gentle 
angel in the house, Amy, the artist, and Jo, the real heroine, 
more like a boy than a girl. A book that boys, too, have 
always enjoyed. 

"The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys," by Gulielma Zoll- 
inger. 

Here we have a capable widow, Irish of course, and her 
lively family of seven boys. They were poor and they were 
plucky and they had a great sense of humor. You are 
ashamed that you ever whimpered after you finish this fine 
story. 

" The Deerslayer," by James Fenimore Cooper. 

Cooper is of course old-fashioned, in his treatment of 
character and his dialogue, but many boys and girls still 
enjoy his matchless portrayals of Indian life and pioneer 
adventure, and like to read his Natty Bumppo series and 
» The Last of the Mohicans." 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 213 

" Boy Pioneers," by Noah Brooks. 

An adventure-story telling how some boys and girls and 
others settled Kansas. Freckled, red-headed Sandy is a 
central figure. There is much about camping, and the in- 
teresting story of a buffalo calf. 

" Masterman Ready," by Frederick Marryat. 

An old-fashioned desert-island story, coarse and pungent 
as sea-salt, full of any amount of wild adventure and brave 
living. 

" The Half-Miler," by A. T. Dudley. 

An unusual school story, based on the career of a well- 
known young athlete, picturing his struggles for an educa- 
tion, his training and his success in athletics and scholarship. 

" Cadet Days," by Charles King. 

Our first and best story about life at West Point, written 
by a graduate and a real soldier. 

" Kidnapped," by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

How David Balfour was kidnaped and cast away; what 
he suffered on a desert island; how he adventured among 
the wild Jacobites of the Highlands and many other stir- 
ring incidents of his dealings with his uncle, Ebenezer Bal- 
four of Shaws, falsely so called. 

" Tom Paulding," by Brander Matthews. 

How a boy sought and found lost treasure right in the 
heart of New York City. A clever boy turns his energies 
to splendid account and solves a difficult problem in a sur- 
prising way. 

" The Lance of Kanana," by Harry W. French. 

How a Bedouin boy, well-trained in body, found his op- 
portunity, endured peril and hardship, and served and saved 
Arabia. 



2i 4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Men of Iron/' by Howard Pyle. 

The best young people's story of the Middle Ages ever 
written. Myles Falworth, the hero, learns how to be a 
knight and fights a good fight to restore to his blind father 
the honors and possessions that belong to him. 

" Cranford," by Mrs. E. C. Gaskell. 

The quietest but most charming humorous story that I 
know. About the lovable littleness of a little English vil- 
lage a hundred years ago. Of a town of widows and spin- 
sters, where a man is almost an intrusion, but where, when 
he does come, all kinds of excitement gather around him. 

" Treasure Island," by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

The author said in his introduction : 

"If sailor tales to sailor tunes, 

Storm and adventure, heat and cold, 
If schooners, islands and maroons, 

And Buccaneers and buried Gold, 
And all the old romance, retold 

Exactly in the ancient way, 
Can please, as me they pleased of old, 

The wiser youngsters of to-day: 
So be it, and fall on ! " 

It is a story of pirates and buried gold and of the sea life 
of the Spanish Main. It has no heroine and no love story. 
It is a tremendously exciting yarn, " retold exactly in the 
ancient way." There is the strongest possible contrast be- 
tween Bill the old Sea Dog with his chum, Silver Jack, the 
one-legged villain of the pleasant smile, and the fine charac- 
ters of the Doctor, the Squire and young Jim Hawkins the 
hero. 

" Rob Roy," by Sir Walter Scott. 

Sir Walter was at his best as a story-teller when portray- 
ing the life of some adventurous hero of his own highlands. 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 215 

Through this stirring novel, he has immortalized the wan- 
dering patriot and the beautiful lake beside which he made 
his home. The young person who thinks that Scott is hard 
reading will not go far in this book before he loses himself 
in the narrative and finds himself sitting up nights to fin- 
ish it. 

" Jean Valjean," by Victor Hugo. 

" Les Miserables " is the biggest novel ever written. It 
is tremendously long, though not so to the reader who once 
gets into it, but I suggest for the first reading that portion 
of it which makes the most of the hero, which is published 
under the title above. Says Sara E. Wiltse, its editor : 

" In the whole range of fiction, there are few studies of 
the development of character that equal Victor Hugo's chief 
hero, Jean Valjean. ... At that age when a youth first 
begins to feel the dawn of all great possibilities in his soul 
he will always be strangely stirred by a hero who combines 
the physical strength of a Sandow, the independence of a 
Father John, the moral force of a Phillips Brooks into one 
impressive personality. . . . There can be no more whole- 
some or effective way of enlarging the soul of youth at that 
peculiar age when all things seem possible, because nothing 
is yet realized, than to bring it into sympathetic contact 
with the character so dynamic, and to place it under the 
spell of the strongest human ideas and sentiments mutually 
held in wholesome restraint as in this character, one of the 
very greatest and ablest creations of modern fiction." 

" The Little Minister," by James M. Barrie. 

Among the many likeable books and plays of our whim- 
sical Scotch novelist this still retains the greatest popularity 
for the young, a popularity enhanced no doubt by the sweet 
genius of Maude Adams, the actress. This tale of the 



216 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Auld Licht manse in Thrums has a mingled quaintness and 
romantic improbability, a stolid hero and a fairylike heroine. 

" Richard Carvel/' by Winston Churchill. 

A book written on a large scale. It has the scenery of 
two continents. Here is Richard Carvel, an American gen- 
tleman of the Maryland colony, living in the stirring days 
just before our Revolution. He is kidnaped by pirates and 
rescued by John Paul Jones, who carries him to London. 
This event takes us into the social life of a great period 
and introduces us to Dorothy Manners, " the belle of Lon- 
don Town," though at heart a simple Maryland lady. 
There is also a stirring account of the sea fight between the 
Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis. 

" The House of the Seven Gables," by Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne. 

The somber, shadow-like genius of Hawthorne still casts 
its spell. This Salem story has its mingled gloom and 
gladness. " The Marble Faun " plays with sprightliness 
about the streets of old Rome and " The Scarlet Letter " 
takes us into the tragedy of the New England forests, 
among which sports the fairy figure of little Pearl. 

" A Tale of Two Cities," by Charles Dickens. 

This was Dickens' only historical novel. It sometimes 
seems as if he had caught somewhat of the magic of Hugo 
when he wrote this stirring tale of the days of the guillo- 
tine. It was a painstaking task, this of reproducing the 
Reign of Terror, and the book has been praised for its 
excellent historical atmosphere. More than that, however, 
it tells the story of a lost life redeemed in the hour of death 
by heroic self-abnegation. 

" David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens. 

It adds to the charm of this book to remember that it is 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 217 

virtually a picture of the author's own boyhood. It is an 
excellent picture of the life of a struggling English youth 
in the middle of the last century. The pictures of Canter- 
bury and London are true pictures, and through these pages 
walks one of Dickens' wonderful processions of characters, 
quaint and humorous, villainous and tragic. Nobody cares 
for Dickens's heroines, least of all for Dora, but, take it all 
in all, this book is enjoyed by young people more than any 
other of the great novelist. After having read this, you 
will wish to read " Nicholas Nickleby " for its mingling of 
pathos and humor, " Martin Chuzzlewit " for its pictures 
of American life as seen through English eyes, and " Pick- 
wick Papers " for its crude but boisterous humor. 

" Henry Esmond," by William M. Thackeray. 

When we ask which of Thackeray's stories we would 
recommend to young people if we could choose but one, we 
hesitate. Thackeray painted one marvelous but not lovable 
heroine, Becky Sharp, and she is found in " Vanity Fair." 
He painted many noble English gentlemen, and there is one 
in " Henry Esmond," though the author called it " a novel 
without a hero." He painted another, George Washing- 
ington, in " The Virginians," and a third, perhaps the finest, 
in " The Newcomes." Well, why not read them all? 

" Lorna Doone," by R. D. Blackmore. 

Lorna Doone ! The very name associates itself with the 
flowing of the mountain brook in the land of the Doones ! 
Lorna, with her sweet, wildwood ways and gentle dignity, 
caught like a caged bird in the castle of the Doones ! " John 
Ridd " — his name tells you of the sturdy, slow English lad 
who loved her as a child and who won her in true English 
fashion by fighting and waiting for her ! The story of that 
first meeting, and of the later wooing in the sunrise of an 



218 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

English May needs the author's beauty of touch. The set- 
ting of the story in its homely details of English country 
life in the seventeenth century is good in its simple contrast 
to the lonely life of Lorna in the wilder home of the Robber 
Barons. 

" To Have and to Hold," by Mary Johnston. , 

This novel of early Jamestown days has had an immense 
and well-deserved popularity. It pictures on a large canvas 
the early days of the sturdy Virginia settlers. The strong 
character of its heroine as it comes into contact with the 
equally strong character of the hero gives a wholesome love 
story. 

" The Rise of Silas Lapham," by William Dean Howells. 

There was never a better picture in American literature of 
the business success of a Yankee than this one by our veteran 
novelist. The New England atmosphere, the youth in the 
city boarding-house, the audacity of business enterprise and 
the humanity that persists even in business shrewdness — 
these have been wonderfully portrayed in Mr. Howells* 
early, and we think, his best work. 

" Stover at Yale," by Owen Johnson. 

I consider this the best college story ever written. Stover 
is a big athlete and in most respects a big fellow generally. 
He goes to Yale from Lawrenceville and at once makes good. 
The book tells how Yale made over Stover and how at 
length Stover started to make over Yale. Some extracts 
from the story in this volume will give you something of the 
flavor of one of the most stirring and stimulating books for 
boys and girls ( for there is a great girl in it) of our time. 

" Westward Ho," by Charles Kingsley. 

This probably is the finest boys' story book ever written. 
It takes the reader, in a succession of breathless activities, 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 219 

from England to America and home again, in the best days 
of adventure that ever were, the days of good Queen Bess. 
The boy who wants to go away to sea, finds his own spirit 
embodied in that of Amyas Leigh and it may be, after a lit- 
tle serious thought, that he will see his own hot-headedness 
mirrored in that sturdy young hero's life. 

" The Cloister and the Hearth," by Charles Reade. 

By common consent the greatest historical novel. It is 
a story of the fifteenth century, just at the time of the in- 
vention of printing, and the influence of that world-chang- 
ing invention is felt all through the book. The author uses 
that always effective device of a journey, and takes his 
young hero from the north of Europe down through Ger- 
many into Italy and back. On the way he meets all the 
interesting types of character of the wonderful age in which 
he lived and passes through many exciting adventures. 
There is a lovely heroine, some pathos and much heroism. 

" Notre Dame/' by Victor Hugo. 

There were two masterpieces, the products of this mighty 
mind, one a comedy of humanity, " Les Miserables," the 
other a pathetic idyl, " Notre Dame." The character of the 
little gypsy girl is one of the daintiest and most appealing in 
all literature. The author ingeniously contrives a tragic 
contrast, a dove against a thunder-cloud. It is a book of 
fascinating interest and noble theme. 

" The Three Guardsmen," by Alexander Dumas. 

No doubt this is the most dashing romance that was ever 
written. It seems paced by the galloping of horsemen. 
The adventures of D'Artagnan and his three fearless com- 
rades draw the reader with restless haste from one page to 
another. It is a wonderful picture which Dumas paints, in 
colors too bright for reality no doubt, of the gorgeous days 



220 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

of Louis the Magnificent. Dumas was not a moralist, and 
this is not a book for Sunday School Libraries, yet it is in 
the main wholesome, for it speaks for loyalty to friends and 
country and readiness for duty no matter how difficult or 
dangerous. It is one of the half-dozen greatest story-books 
ever written. 

" Green Mansions," by W. H. Hudson. * 

I hope it is not the fresh enthusiasm alone of having just 
read this fairy like story of adventure in the tropical forest 
that makes me think this worthy to take rank in even the 
briefest list of good romances. There is a brave hero, and a 
heroine so dainty and so delicate that when you are through 
you hardly know whether you have been loving a real 
woman or feeling the winsomeness of all sweet womanhood. 

" Seventeen," by Booth Tarkington. 

Here is another good book. It is referred to elsewhere in 
my chapters as one of the funniest lately written. But I 
commend it to boys, and to girls, too, as a study of boyhood 
that helps a fellow see himself as others see him. If it helps 
you laugh at yourself, it will do you good. 

" Seats of the Mighty/' by Gilbert Parker. 

This book, like " Richard Carvel," takes us both sides the 
Atlantic and gives us heroic and romantic deeds by chivalrous 
men and fair ladies of our race, both in England and in old 
Quebec. 

" College Years," by Ralph D. Paine. 

A collection of lively, wholesome stories of American col- 
lege life of the present day. 

" Four Gordons," by Edna A. Brown. 

The " Four Gordons " are Louise and her three brothers, 
all of high-school age. Great responsibility at home comes 
upon the girl during the absence of the parents, while the 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 221 

chief interest centers in certain school episodes connected 
with the problem of student government. This excellently 
written story bears the stamp of refinement throughout and 
sets forth natural comradeship between boys and girls at 
its best. 

POETRY 

" The Home Book of Verse for Young People/' edited 
by Burton E. Stevenson. 

The largest collection of its sort, including more than a 
thousand poems. They are well selected and of every va- 
riety, and the volume is one to be used frequently. 

" An American Anthology," edited by Edmund Clarence 
Stedman. 

Our best collection of purely American verse. Here we 
have the best of our three young people's poets, Longfellow, 
Lowell, and Whittier, much of Whitman, Lanier and Bry- 
ant, and many familiar poems by the lesser choir. 

BIOGRAPHY 

"The Boy's Life of Abraham Lincoln," by Helen 
Nicolay. . 

Miss Nicolay's father was Lincoln's private secretary and 
his best biographer, so this book is reliable. It is also inter- 
esting. It tells about the real Lincoln, the most lovable 
hero of modern times. It describes his early struggles, his 
love of books, his gift for jest and story-telling, his love for 
children, his tender sympathy for the unfortunate, his alle- 
giance to duty, his simple faith. 

" The Making of an American," by Jacob A. Riis. 

Jacob Riis is a splendid type of American citizen to give 
to any boy. His honesty and justice, his jovial good fellow- 
ship and all embracing charity toward the weak and un- 



222 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

fortunate, his hot-headed indignation over unfairness and 
injustice, his splendid power as a reformer manifested in 
his keen searching out of wrong conditions, and then " ever- 
lastingly keeping at it " through press and public until the 
right prevailed, all mark a fine, noble, everyday type of the 
real American citizen. 

The story of his love-life is a very wholesome and 
romantic one, and the vein of romance interwoven with the 
account of his political and business career makes the book 
very delightful reading. 

" The Story of My Life," by Helen Keller. 

Mark Twain said that " the two most interesting charac- 
ters of the nineteenth century are Napoleon and Helen 
Keller." The girl with the greatest handicap tells how she 
learned to lift it. In simple, moving language she describes 
how she came to hear, see and speak through others. It is 
the most inspiring story for girls in modern biography. 

COUNSEL 

" The Call of the Twentieth Century/' by David Starr 
Jordan. 

I don't know how many times I have recommended this as 
the most inspiring book of counsel for boys and girls that 
I know. I know of nothing better as a stimulus to young 
people who are preparing themselves for the places which 
are to be open to them in our present century. Though not 
giving a detailed discussion, the author takes up in succes- 
sion the various possible vocations, but the strength of the 
book is v its virile appeal to genuine manhood. No better 
book could be placed in the hands of a high-school boy by 
his father than this. 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 223 

ART 

" The Children's Book of Art," by Agnes Ethel Conway 
and Sir Martin Conway. 

Nothing better can be found for interesting young peo- 
ple who are old enough to be thoughtful, in good pictures. 
This is a most simple and sensible book. It interweaves a 
sketch of the history of art with illustrations typical of 
each period. It shows the young scoffer the spirit that was 
behind the quaintness of the thirteenth century art and re- 
veals the possibilities which color, composition, and inspira- 
tion may achieve. The most noticeable characteristic of the 
book is its wonderful reproductions in color of pictures of 
paintings. The subjects selected are unusual ones, hanging 
in English galleries, yet their choice is well suited to the ap- 
preciation of young people. 

BOOKS OF KNOWLEDGE 

Here is a list, naming one good book upon each of half 

a hundred practical subjects. Your bookseller will be glad 

to order any of them for you, if they do not happen to be in 

the local library. 

Adventure — " Careers of Danger and Daring," by Cleve- 
land Moffett. 

Astronomy — " Children's Book of the Stars," by G. E. 
Mitton. 

Athletics—" The Book of Athletics," edited by Paul With- 
ington. 

Birds— "Methods of Attracting Birds," by Gilbert H. 
Trafton. 

Botany — " How to Know the Wild Flowers," by Mrs. F. 
T. S. Parsons. 



224 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Business — " How to Get and Keep a Job," by N. C. Fowler, 

Jr- 

Camping — " Camping for Boys," by H. W. Gibson. 
Carpentry — " Wood-working for Beginners," by C. G. 

Wheeler. 
College — " Why Go to College," by Clayton Sedgwick 

Cooper. 
Cooking — " Mrs. Farmer's Cook Book." 
Crafts — " Art Crafts for Beginners," by F. G. Sanford. 
Electricity — ■" The Boy Electrician," by Alfred P. Mor- 
gan. 
Engineering — " With Men Who Do Things," by A. R. 

Bond. 
Entomology — " How to Know the Butterflies," by Mr. and 

Mrs. J. H. Comstock. 
Farming — "Agriculture," by O. H. Benson. 
Firemanship — " Fighting a Fire," by C. T. Hill. 
First Aid — " First Aid to the Injured," by F. J. Warwick. 
Fishing — " Boy's Own Guide to Fishing," by J. H. Keene. 
Games — " Games for Playground, Home, School, and 

Gymnasium," by Jessie H. Bancroft. 
Gardening — " Manual of Gardening," by L. H. Bailey. 
Health — " Physical Training for Boys," by Dr. M. N. 

Bunker. 
Invention — " The Boy's Book of Inventions," by Ray Stan- 

nard Baker. 
Machinery — " Home Mechanics for Amateurs," by G. M. 

Hopkins. 
Marksmanship — " Guns, Ammunition, and Tackle," by A. 

W. Money. 
Mineralogy — " Boy Mineral Collector," by J. G. Kelley. 
Music — " How to Listen to Music," by H. E. Krehbiel. 



BOOKS YOU ARE BOUND TO ENJOY 225 

Nature — " Harper's Handbook for Young Naturalists," by 

A. Hyatt Verrill. 
Ornithology — "Bird Life," by F. M. Chapman. 
Paleontology — " The Monster-Hunters," by Francis Rolt- 

Wheeler. 
Personal Hygiene for Girls — -"The Three Gifts of Life," 

by Nellie M. Smith. 
Personal Hygiene for Boys — " Keeping in Condition," by 

Harry H. Moore. 
Photography — " Photography for Young People," by 

Tudor Jenks. 
Pictures — " How to Enjoy Pictures," by M. S. Emery. 
Poultry —". How to Keep Hens for Profit," by C. S. Valen- 
tine. 
Swimming — " At Home in the Water," by George H. Cor- 

san. 
Travel — " Boy's Book of Explorations," by Tudor Jenks. 
Zoology — " Four-Footed Americans," by M. C. Wright. 



XXVII 
HEATHER HONEY 

THE Scotch beekeepers who live in the lowlands send 
their bees in summer up among the mountains, because 
thereby they produce more delicious honey. This they know 
as heather honey. 

Out-of -school education is the heather honey of our lives. 
It is scarcer. I suppose you can buy twenty pounds of low- 
land honey in Edinburgh to one of heather honey. It 
takes some time for a bee to travel up Ben Nevis and home. 
He has other things to do than gather honey. When we are 
out of school we do not get on so fast. We miss our 
teachers, who were so ready to help. We miss our refer- 
ence books, which made things so plain. We miss the text- 
books, which told us what to do next. A man out of school 
is somewhat like a bee in the heather. He has nobody to 
tell him where to go or what to do next. He has other 
things to do than get honey. But he gets better honey. 

It is sweeter. There is said to be a peculiar tang about 
heather honey, as if the bees had brought home from the 
mountain outlooks and the lonely slopes and the fine pure 
air something that they could not gain in the lowlands. 
The high heather has something which the garden blos- 
soms have lost. Out-of -school education is sweet. It was 
plucked out of books propped against the mirror when shav- 
ing, or against the shelf when washing dishes. It was 

226 



HEATHER HONEY 227 

gained out of lonely experiences in watching by the sick at 
night, and in working overtime in the office or the kitchen. 
It has the peculiar tang which comes by getting it direct from 
men more than from books, from fresh human experiences 
instead of those remembered and embalmed in leather covers. 
It is as honest as sunlight, and as real as mountain wind, 
and as sweet as loyalty. 

Out-of-school education is made out of homely things; 
things that, like heather, are around one's feet. I had a 
chance to show this to one of my friends the other day. 

THE SELF-EDUCATING OF JIM 

" I'm afraid I can't go to school this fall," Jim Johnson 
told me. 

I knew what the trouble was; lack of money and an in- 
valid mother to take care of. Very likely Jim will never be 
able to go to school again. 

" But of course you are going on with your education? " I 
responded cheerfully. 

" Why, no," he said with surprise, " not if I don't go to 
school. How can I? Why, I won't even get much chance 
to read." 

" Shall I tell you about a course of study in three parts," 
said I, " that will make you one of the best informed and 
most interesting men in this town ? " 

" What is it ? Bay View or Chautauqua ? " 

" Neither, though both are good. But this is better than 
either. It has only three simple rules, but it works, for I've 
tried it myself for a number of years." 

" Go ahead. What is Rule One? " . 

" Rule One is : Every day talk with some interesting 
man. Books are all right, but our best wisdom is caught, 



228 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

not taught. Edward Everett Hale used to put it this way: 
' Rub shoulders every day with a man who knows more than 
you do/ There are lots of them, and all the best teachers 
are not in professors' chairs. If you could get hold of your 
next Chautauqua or Lyceum lecturer for an hour after his 
talk, you might learn almost as much as some do in a whole 
term at school. And each day you meet some fellow-towns- 
man who has lived an adventurous life or who works in 
some important industry or who has kept his mental blinders 
off and seen something, whose talk will be as stimulating as 
an electric shock. 

" Rule Two is : Every week buy an interesting book. 
As I said, men are worth more than books, but some of the 
worth-while men are dead, and the only way you can get 
acquainted with them is through the books they have writ- 
ten. You say you cannot afford to go to school, but you 
can at least afford textbooks for yourself. These textbooks, 
the writings of the greatest masters, can be bought in various 
inexpensive series for from twenty to forty cents a piece. 
Think what it may mean to you to have fifty-two textbooks 
a year at a total cost of only ten or fifteen dollars. 

" The last rule is the most important of all. It is this : 
Every night think an interesting thought. To think is more 
important than to read or to talk. There was once in a 
certain university a neglected-looking instructor who never- 
theless was regarded as one of the wisest men in the insti- 
tution. One of the students once asked him : ' Peirott, how 
is it that you know everything? ' This was his answer, in 
his broken foreign accent. ' I tell you. When you fellows 
have finished supper you light your lamps and you get to- 
gether in your rooms and you talk and talk and talk. But I 
go into my room alone, I light no lamp, and I sit and I 



HEATHER HONEY 229 

sink. The trouble with you is that you never sink some 
sings.' I agree with Peirott, Jim, that to ' sink some sings ' 
is the best way to end your day." 

" I think," said Jim earnestly, " that I will begin my new 
course at once." 

" While you are doing it, you might make the motto of 
Fitzsimmons, the prize-fighter, yours." 

"What was it?" 

" * My secret is to hit from where I am/ " 

WHAT IS IT TO BE EDUCATED? 

To win a high-school or a college diploma? That cer- 
tainly is not it. Some persons say, It is to be better able 
to earn a living. This answer is not to be despised, for in 
these days of the high cost of living, when it is hard even 
to stay on this old world comfortably, if education can 
help us do this more successfully — and we know it usually 
does — it does well. 

A better answer is: Education helps one to find his 
place in the world. When we think of the numbers of peo- 
ple who forever are doing uninteresting things, being motor- 
men, night-watchmen, demonstrators of breakfast- foods, and 
of the many who are doing that for which they are ill-suited, 
we are glad to know that schooling usually opens the world's 
doors and shows young people into which one they can best 
enter. 

Ray Stannard Baker is not famous as an educator, but he 
once gave a test of education that is much more to my liking. 
He said that an educated man is one who can keep moving 
after his teachers are through pushing him from behind. 
It is the power of self-propulsion. When you find one who 
moves forward not because of some outward shove, but by 



230 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

his own inner motive power, you have found an educated 
man. 

But I want to name a test of my own. I do not say it is 
the best, but I know it is a good one. An educated man is 
one with whom you could ride all day on the train without 
being bored. Think it over a little. You notice that this 
definition says nothing about the salary a man can earn or 
the place he fills or how far he has " got ahead." It means 
simply this : he has an interesting mind. There was once a 
cobbler in Bloomington, Indiana, who so well met this test 
that the Presbyterian minister there told me that his idea 
of heaven was to have all the time he wanted to listen to 
Henry Bates. 

To be this kind of man does not require a college educa- 
tion, though it does mean that its owner should have gath- 
ered in some way much that college has to give. It does 
not require that one should be a great talker. It does imply 
that one should be a great listener. To be able to give light 
continually to others one must have cherished steadily the 
fire within. It means that one should have been forever glad 
to learn. 

An educated man then is one who has an interesting and 
an interested mind. 



XXVIII 
" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY FOLKS " 

IS any feeble-minded person reading this book? I sup- 
pose not. Anybody else who complains that he cannot 
succeed in life, because he " didn't have any folks," is laying 
the blame where very little of it belongs. 

Think of the men who have succeeded who " didn't have 
any folks." 

William Carey, the father of foreign missions, was a cob- 
bler and the son of a cobbler. 

Dorothea Dix, " America's Florence Nightingale," had to 
run away from her poor home at thirteen in order to get a 
chance for an education. 

Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, worked in a 
factory as a cloth-trimmer, in order to save money for an 
education. 

David Harum said so many rich New Yorkers started 
as railroad hands that if he should shout "Low Bridge! " 
at a New York dinner, most of the men present would duck 
their heads. 

Sir Andrew Fisher, Australia's greatest man, who, some 
say, is going to make a new constitution for the British Em- 
pire, was from the age of ten a Scotch miner who drove 
little wagons loaded with coal along low galleries where he 
hit the roof with his head. 

David Lloyd George, the greatest living Englishman, was 

231 



232 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

the son of a poor schoolmaster who died when he was little 
and his foster-father was his uncle who was an even poorer 
cobbler. Mr. Lloyd George said when he was a young 
man : " There is nothing that you could tell me about the 
worries and anxieties of labor that I did not know for the 
first twenty years of my life." 

EVEN BACKWARDNESS IS NOT HOPELESS 

There is always hope even for a backward youth, when 
he has found himself. 

" Our Davie's a fine good-natured cratur, but uncommon 
wake-minded." This was what was said of David Hume, 
later the great historian, by his own mother. 

" When I left school," said Charles Darwin, " I was con- 
sidered by all my masters and by my father rather below the 
common standard in intellect. My father once said to me, 
* You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, 
and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.' ' 
But he was not. He became the greatest scientist of the 
nineteenth century. 

Napoleon Bonaparte stood forty-second in his class. 
" But who were the forty-one above him? " The only way 
Lord Byron could lead his class was when they inverted the 
order and put the tail-enders at the top. 

Patrick Henry was seldom found in school, but generally 
roamed the forest like an Indian. He did not wake up till 
he was married, when he tried the law, and succeeded. 

When the great speaker, Henry Ward Beecher, was a boy 
he had such a thick utterance that it was hard to understand 
him, he was a poor writer, and he was so shy that he ap- 
peared stupid. 



" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY FOLKS " 233 

HEREDITY CANNOT HOLD YOU DOWN 

If you have read the work of some extremist on heredity 
you can easily discourage yourself by the idea that you are 
" fated." But a sane view leaves no such conclusion. Let 
me give you a few straight truths on the subject. 

You have been told that children " take after " their par- 
ents in energy, ability to learn and many other valuable orig- 
inal traits. Very well, but nature is at least impartial. A 
drunkard cannot reproduce his kind by heredity. A bad 
man cannot fix his sins and mistakes upon his children 
through inheritance. Neither is it believed to be possible 
through direct descent to hand down truthfulness, kindness, 
and courage. It may be put this way: your friend may 
have inherited a bigger cup, but the water of life in it is no 
purer than what your cup contains. 

Farther up the stream of your family life there may be 
one brooklet that is contaminated. But what you receive is 
not the taint ; at most it is a tendency. Bodily mutilations, 
personal maladies (aside from certain racial poisons), and 
personally acquired bad habits are not hereditable. There 
is no adequate evidence, as I have said, that an appetite for 
strong drink is hereditary. The most that can be said is 
that one may inherit a constitutional weakness to be easy- 
going, to follow the crowd, and this in unfavorable circum- 
stances may take him where he is likely to learn to drink. 
If a fellow knows this, all he has to do is to choose his 
crowd and to make it the battle of his life to become a leader 
and not a follower. Then if a boy or girl inherits a dan- 
gerous tendency from one parent, he may inherit a compen- 
sating tendency from another. He inherits, too, from the 



234 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

distant past, and few men are there whose family tree was 
not engrafted at some time or other with noble stock. Abra- 
ham Lincoln plainly inherited shiftlessness from his father, 
who was never able to make a success of life, but from some- 
where else, perhaps from his mother, perhaps from the sturdy 
line of Puritan Lincolns of Massachusetts, he inherited some- 
thing different. Lincoln chose from his inheritance the bet- 
ter part. And you can do the same. 

Your own inheritance is limited, you say. You can never 
add anything to what has been handed down. But you do 
not know what your limits are, and you never can. You 
are always in the bud. You are always taking out of this 
concealed treasury. You may always be coming upon un- 
suspected nuggets. It is particularly noticeable that be- 
tween twelve and twenty a new fullness in heredity often 
displays itself. Then a youth who has hitherto resembled 
his father begins to look like and be like his mother, or be- 
gins to " take after " another side of his house. Perhaps 
you are just upon the brink of such a self -discovery. 

Again, it is possible to improve this superior strain when 
it does appear. This is done through marriage into a su- 
perior stock, by which inferior qualities are crowded out or 
brought unto the normal. But it may be come about also 
by doing our share to build up a social heritage of estab- 
lished truth, of pure home life, of stimulating ideals, in 
which the dormant capacities of our own children may have 
a better chance. It has always been a theory of mine that 
geniuses are usually the children of people of talent who 
gave their children a wise bringing-up. It is extraordinary, 
for instance, to note how many brilliant men have been the 
sons of country ministers who themselves produced nothing 



" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY FOLKS " 235 

but town histories and good children, but who gave their 
sons and daughters a taste for books. 

A cauliflower has been called " a cabbage with a college 
education." If you are but a cabbage, you can make cauli- 
flowers out of your children. When you think of what 
Luther Burbank has done with the prickly cactus, how he has 
given gigantic and luscious berries to the world from the 
stock of common ones, and how he has wrought miracles 
with the vegetable world, don't you think it is rather small 
to suppose that you cannot do as much with your human 
stuff? And the glory of it is, that although the mother of 
the cauliflower may remain a cabbage, the plain parent of the 
child that is given a chance does not remain as she was. 
The better part of what she gives her child she gets herself. 
I have never seen the father or mother who had given a son 
an education who stayed common. 

In this view nothing is more little or cowardly than to 
blame one's own defects or mistakes upon one's inheritance. 
Each of us has a good enough inheritance to make a good 
life of if he will avail himself of it, and each of us can 
choose an atmosphere to live in that shall give that good 
inheritance a chance. Professor Michael F. Guyer of the 
University of Wisconsin puts it strongly in these terms: 
"If training can redirect the machine-like behavior of as 
lowly a creature as the starfish into new courses, why should 
we be so willing to throw up our hands and admit failure in 
the case of man? " And he adds, that the lowermost level 
necessary to rank one as a responsible creature is within 
the reach of any one not actually defective, if he will put 
himself in a place where he has a chance. " All normal men 
are responsible for their conduct." 



XXIX 
"I DIDN'T HAVE ANY CHANCE" 

TWO remarkable stories came to my attention lately of 
men who have made of life a success and a joy under 
the terrible handicap of blindness. One, Clarence Hawkes, 
wrote the account of his life in the Outlook, in an article 
entitled, Hitting the Dark Trail. When he was nine years 
old he was obliged to suffer the loss of a leg, and ever after 
he went halting to watch the play of his chums. At thirteen, 
thirty years ago, as the result of a shooting accident, he lost 
his eyesight, and now for thirty years he has walked in 
darkness. Think of it — at thirteen, the ceiling his sky, 
the carefully sought pathway of a small familiar round his 
prison-house. No wonder it took him six months of slow 
and weary thinking to decide whether life was worth living. 
At the end of that time he had learned what he calls his 
" Rule of Three," Patience, Perseverance, and Pluck. 
Graduating from the Perkins Institute in both the manual 
branches and in music, he found relief in work, and then, 
going back to his country home, he began to make his living 
by writing. Bright men with two eyes have found that a 
precarious task, but Mr. Hawkes has succeeded at it. His 
first volume of poems netted him over a thousand dollars. 
He has written, largely from his wonderful memory of his 
boyhood, nine animal and nature books. He is also a lec- 
turer. " My life," he says, " is a very busy one. In the 

236 



" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY CHANCE " 237 

out-of-door season I sandwich in fishing, boating, baseball 
games, and many other outdoor pastimes. Each year I 
write one or two new books, thirty or forty magazine 
articles, and do considerable lecturing." 

His memory is both his treasure-house and his companion. 
He writes, " My inner self is a wonderful world of Junes 
and Octobers, that come and go in sympathy with the passing 
year; but my June is always just a little ahead of the real 
June, for the heart anticipates its own joys, and the mind 
builds its own castles in Spain." And again, " Life to me 
is a struggle that is infinitely worth while." 

Another story, not less inspiring, is that of Will Adams, 
the blind and bedridden editor, who passed away in Mar- 
quette, Michigan, a few months ago. Ever since he was 
sixteen he had suffered from a peculiar rheumatic ailment 
which made the use of the joints impossible. His weight 
never exceeded fifty pounds. He could not handle a pen, 
book, or typewriter, and his eyesight was so dim that he was 
unable to read. Yet he edited an eight-page daily evening 
paper until within a few days of his death. 

This was the way he worked. His life was spent on his 
couch. He had three telephones, and all his waking hours 
were spent with a receiver strapped to his ear. He had a 
stenographer beside him constantly. Not only did he fur- 
nish the greater part of the copy for his paper, but he was 
business manager, solicitor, and general all-round man of 
the establishment. He wrote a book with the suggestive 
title, " Old Saws with New Teeth." Collaborating with the 
music-teacher of the city schools, he wrote a comic opera. 
He was passionately fond of music, and he had his couch 
carried to the opera house whenever something good came 
to town. 



238 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

He had been a live boy. He was boy soprano in the 
cathedral, he was the first American boy who ever met 
President Diaz of Mexico, and he was a personal friend of 
General Reyes, who was talked of as the successor to Presi- 
dent Diaz. Travel and song, of course, were made impos- 
sible, but he did a man's work in a boy's body till he died. 

MEN WHO WERE HANDICAPPED 

" Evan Harrington " is a story that has been called " the 
most joyous comedy in the language." When George Mere- 
dith wrote it, he bought a sack of oatmeal, and having no 
money with which to get fuel, mixed it with water, and 
lived on that pallid sustenance until he had finished a novel 
that is full of laughter, bird-songs, and jolly cricket on the 
village green. 

The histories of Francis Parkman are among the most 
stirring and lifelike ever published. They were written by 
a man whose eyes gave out because of his exposures when 
gathering materials among the Indians and who when he be- 
gan his work could use them for but five minutes, or enough 
to write six lines, a day. All his books and manuscripts 
had to be read to him. He invented a frame by which he 
could write with closed eyes. Finally he trained his eyes 
so that by reading one minute and resting one minute he 
could, work for half an hour at a time and do this three 
or four times a day. When he could not write or think 
for the pain, he cultivated roses. For fifty years he worked 
like this, and his splendid histories have not a hint of sick- 
ness or infirmity in them. He had once desired to be a 
hero in battle, but Senator Lodge well said of him : " On 
the tomb of the conqueror of Quebec is written : ' Here lies 
Wolfe, victorious.' The same epitaph might with entire 



" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY CHANCE " 239 

justice be carved upon the grave of Wolfe's historian." 
A clergyman found himself a few years ago, with uncer- 
tain health and consequent discouragement, forced to resign 
a large parish and to retire. He took his small savings and 
bought a farm, expecting to make at the best a precarious 
living for his family until he died. He was fond of ama- 
teur photography. In his farmhouse was a very beautiful 
fireplace. One day he said to his wife : " If we had an 
old-fashioned aunt and a cat and some brass candlesticks, 
what a Colonial picture we could make." At her suggestion 
he asked a neighbor to come in for a sitting, and to bring 
her cat and her candles. When the photograph had been 
finished the man gave it to his wife to touch it up with her 
water-colors. It was so beautiful that he carried it down 
to the village drug-store and asked the proprietor if he 
thought he could sell a few on commission. Before he 
reached home he had word by telephone that he had better 
finish up a dozen, and before these were ready he had more 
orders than he could keep up with. He hired a girl, then 
three, then a dozen, and now I don't know how many. But 
whenever you see the photographs of Wallace Nutting in a 
picture store, you are seeing the work of a man who did not 
let a handicap keep him back. He has won great wealth, 
snd is a happy man. 

" The harder you're thrown, the higher you bounce ! 
Be proud of your blackened eye! 
It isn't the fact that you're beaten that counts, 
It's how did you fight — and why." 

" ACRES OF DIAMONDS " 

Doctor Russell H. Conwell has delivered his lecture with 
the title above over 5,200 times. I do not know which is the 



240 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

more remarkable, the lecture or the -experiences of the lec- 
turer which fortify it. The subject, as you know, is simply 
this : Opportunity is right at home ; and the lecture is little 
more than a chain of anecdotes of people who have found 
that they had plenty of chances without going far afield to 
find them. Most of the instances have come out of the 
lecture itself or the lecturer's observation. Dr. Conwell tells 
of a woman who heard the lecture and went home. While 
she was trying to unfasten a refractory button her husband 
challenged her to apply the Doctor's lecture by contriving 
something that would unbutton easier. Thereupon she in- 
vented the snap that is universally used on gloves and rubber 
coats, and, so the Doctor says, later took her skeptical hus- 
band abroad in her own steam-yacht, earned out of the pro- 
ceeds. Another went West to seek a silver-mine, while the 
man who bought his farm found silver in the stones of the 
wall around the old place. The Doctor, as I have suggested, 
has made his own lecture good. When he came to Phila- 
delphia to take the pastorate of a run-down church he was 
soon enabled to build a new church building. He left some 
doors in the second-story overlooking the church lawn and 
opening out into the empty air. When asked what they 
were for, he suggested that they might be good for fire- 
escapes, but some years later he built the hospital that he 
had planned on the grounds and connected the doors with 
its interior. As is well known, the last thing the Doctor 
does every night is to endorse the check he has just received 
for his lecture to help some young man get an education. 
But years ago he determined that young men in his own city 
should have such opportunities right at hand. And so he 
founded the Temple University. He is proud of some of 
the records that have been made at the university, this eve- 



" I DIDN'T HAVE ANY CHANCE " 241 

ning college for poor boys and girls. A boy had a peanut- 
stand on Broad Street, and one evening was told by a 
stranger that he could get an education at Temple. He 
expected to sell peanuts for years, and thought an education 
a mere dream for him. He is now a successful physician 
in a fine community. A girl getting three dollars a week in 
a millinery store as a cash-girl decided to " learn something " 
at Temple, and only five years later her income from her 
own millinery store is three thousand six hundred and fifty 
dollars above all expenses for each year. 

I am getting to be persuaded of the truth of Sam Walter 
Foss's lines : 

" There is magic in the near, 

And beauty blooms on every bough; 
And there are Hesper islands here, 

And there are El Dorados now. 
Not far the Golden Age, but near; 

Fate's fruit is on the nearest bough, — 
So sing the Songs of Now and Here, 

The brave, glad Songs of Here and Now." 

A few weeks ago I circulated among several hundred 
young people a question-sheet, intended to help them under- 
stand their prospects better by careful self -study. One 
question was : " How. do your opportunities in life com- 
pare with those of your favorite hero at your age ? " Every 
single one replied : " They are much better than his." 

Isn't the answer to this whole whimper, " I never had a 
chance," summed up very nicely in that other poem by Foss, 
" No Show " ? 

" Joe Beal 'ud set upon a kaig 

Down to the groc'ry store an' throw 



242 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

One laig right o'er t'other laig, 
An' swear he'd never had no show; 
' Oh no/ said Joe, 
' Hain't hed no show/ — 
Then shift his quid to t'other jaw, 
An' chaw, an' chaw, an' chaw, an' chaw. 

He said he got no start in life, 

Didn't get no money from his dad, 
The washin' took in by his wife 
Earned all the funds he ever had; 
1 Oh no/ said Joe, 
' Hain't hed no show/ — 
An' then he'd look up at the clock, 
An' talk, an' talk, an' talk, an' talk. 

) 
' I've waited twenty year, — le's see — 

Yes, twenty-four, an' never struck, 
Altho' I've set roun' patiently, 
The fust tarnation streak of luck. 
' Oh no/ said Joe, 
' Hain't hed no show/ — 
Then stuck like mucilage on the spot, 
An' sot, an' sot, an' sot, an' sot. 

' I've come down regerler every day 
For twenty years to Piper's store; 
I've sot here in a patient way; 

Say, hain't I, Piper ? ' Piper swore, 
' I tell yer, Joe, 
Yer hev no show — 
Yer too dern patient/ — ther hull raft 
Jest laffed, an' laffed, an' laffed, an' laffed." 



XXX 

THE CONQUEST OF DRUDGERY 

**^^/*ES," said my high-school friend Joe to me, "but 
* what I can't stand is the drudgery. You have to do 
so many things that are tiresome if you want to get any- 
where." 

So you do, even in football. But the fellow who does not 
mind the dirt of football ought not to dread the dust that 
comes in sweeping out an office. 

I was talking with a boy the other day who was going 
to earn his way through college this year by freezing ice- 
cream and shaking down a furnace. His brother had found 
what seemed to me a more genteel way of getting the same 
result without having his hands dirty — dish- washing. I 
asked the boy if he wouldn't dislike the drudgery. Then he 
explained enthusiastically how it wasn't half so bad as 
dish-washing because he could eat with his mates, and that 
there was such a variety that he couldn't tire of it, and that 
he could edge it in between his recitations, and that when 
his work was done it left him no after-worries, and so on 
and so on, until I really envied him and almost wished I 
were as young and as interested as he. 

The writer of a recent article on this subject speaks prin- 
cipally to housewives, and she begins by showing that there 
is a beautiful side to canning fruit. " There is so -much 
color and perfume to fruit that it's like handling flowers. I 

243 



244 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

like to see it in baskets before it is touched ; I gloat upon it as 
I handle, wash, and prepare it, and after it is in the cans I 
go again and again to look upon its richness through the 
glass.'' She even finds something lovely in dish-washing — 
" the lights and colors as I souse the glasses and seeing them 
shine as I wipe them." Getting ready for Christmas in the 
home she thinks would lose all its drudgery if, when we 
went after greens, we would see the sun glisten on the snow, 
watch the snowbirds scamper, and look for the rabbit tracks. 
" I am trying," often says Dr. John Brashear, the maker 
of telescopes, " to make people see the beautiful in the famil- 
iar things of life." And so sometimes when people come to 
his workroom to look at the stars the old white-haired man 
blows soap-bubbles before them, and reminds them that the 
iridescence of the bubbles and the dance of color on a prism 
swinging in the sunlight have the same glory that is thrown 
from a million stars. 

THERE IS NO CURE-ALL FOR DRUDGERY 

The best advice I have ever seen about meeting drudgery 
is that given by Joseph Lee. He frankly acknowledges that 
there is no " anti-drudgery specific." Heroism can never 
be made easy. If it could, if we should get so we could 
enjoy drudgery, we would become machines, like those 
French children that Max O'Rell tells about " who learn 
their lessons so perfectly that they keep on reciting them all 
the rest of their lives." The way we get the best of 
drudgery is to find some motive big enough to make us per- 
sist, drudgery or no. 

He instances the football player. " What makes the foot- 
ball player is the kicking, not the being kicked. It is learn- 
ing to keep his eye on the ball and his heart on getting it 



THE CONQUEST OF DRUDGERY 245 

over the line, utterly regardless of bumps and kicks and other 
physical annoyances, that makes a player of him. It is what 
he has learned to do, not what he has become accustomed 
to suffer, that has developed him." 

Take your own case. You positively hate, let us say, 
some subject in school. The way to conquer it is not to 
think of the pain, but to increase the power. You want to 
be able to master the thing this subject leads to, or you want 
to make good, or you want to get into college, or you want 
to please your father — these motives will push you on, and 
by putting into your work the same spirit you do in foot- 
ball, namely, " to follow the ball," you reach your goal, even 
if you get some scratches by the way. And supposing even 
these motives fail at times, why then you have learned from 
your games how to keep on; you won't be a " squealer " 
and you will hang by bulldog grit till you get through. 
Some day, Mr. Lee promises, if we try to act each time with 
a little more- spirit, " we may graduate into the hilarious 
mood of the true sons of battle, and do our fighting in the 
grand manner of a Raleigh or a Farragut" 

I think it is Helen Keller, who is blind and deaf and dumb, 
who wrote these brave words : 

" Life is full of homely tasks, plain duties, ordinary and 
humdrum employment. There are various ways to do our 
part. One does his with grim endurance. Another frets 
and nags and scolds and storms. Still another whines, com- 
plains, and weeps over the hardness of his lot. But he who 
goes to his work, whatever it may be, with a brisk and 
merry heart, turning it this way and that to get the play of 
sunlight upon it, is the one who will accomplish most, the 
one who will find joy and happiness flowering ever in the 
path before him, and who will have not a sour and doleful 



246 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

memory of uncongenial labor, but a mosaic of sunshine, tree- 
shade, bird-song, brook-murmur, fragrance, and beauty upon 
which to turn the eye of his mind for all the remainder of 
his life. ,, 



XXXI 
A DITCH OR A BREASTWORK? 

EVERY morning when I go across the fields to the 
city, I leap across a ditch. I had often wondered why- 
it was there, so high on the hill where there was no marsh 
land to drain. I have learned that it was a breastwork and 
that it was dug by the men of this settlement, mostly 
Quakers, about the time of the battle of the Brandy wine in 
the Revolutionary War. 

It was never used for actual defense, but as I looked 
about me and remembered what I had read in an old yellow 
newspaper about the neighborhood I realized that there 
could not have been more than a score of farmers to dig 
it hastily. It was a hard task. It was a brave one. Evi- 
dently they had expected to make their first defense up by 
Baltimore Pike, perhaps behind their stone barns and fences, 
and then they were going to fall back here to their last line 
of defense, just in front of their homes. It was a pathetic 
kind of bravery, for it would not seem that this ditch could 
have kept back a detachment from that British army, flushed 
with victory, for ten minutes. But the diggers were staunch 
Englishmen themselves, though men of peace, and their 
leader was one of the signers of the Declaration. It seems 
to me that, though not called upon to do battle here, they 
deserve to be remembered with those other minute men, 
" the embattled farmers " of Concord, who " fired the shot 
heard round the world." 

247 



248 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

As I think about my own day's work, which is likely to 
be one of drudgery, I say to myself, " Will that which I do 
to-day be a ditch or a breastwork ? " 

I, too, am under training for something. I may some day 
have an unexpected and great battle to fight. The drill 
ground is not large like the field of battle, but it is the place 
where I am being trained to meet the foe. The whole de- 
fense of my life may sometime center upon the work I shall 
do to-day. Let me then dig my ditch like an entrenchment. 

And I say also to myself, thinking how well those fore- 
fathers did all their work, and that the very stone house I 
myself live in was builded by one of the men that dug that 
ditch, " Cannot I also work in the spirit of the maker of en- 
trenchments ? May I not believe that what I do will make 
life safer for others? Cannot I hope that they will have 
more courage if I am ready to stand on the firing-line? " 

One of the bravest stories in the Bible is about Nehemiah, 
and all that he did was to build a wall, an entrenchment about 
his city. That is what I will do. People may think that I 
am only a ditch-digger, but it is not so. I will be a maker 
of breastworks. 

WHAT MAKES A SHRINE? 

Holy places are apt to be disappointing. The Holy Sepul- 
cher in Jerusalem is the scene of unseemly riots between 
various warring sects. St. Peter's at Rome impresses the 
visitor more by its vastness than by its sanctity. And when 
one does find a shrine to satisfy him, he usually discovers 
that it is simply a spot where commonplace deeds have been 
beautifully done. I once visited La Verna, the mountain 
top where St. Francis received the stigmata as ultimate 
proof of his holiness. Yet that shrine is chiefly loved be- 



A DITCH OR A BREASTWORK? 249 

cause here St. Francis was welcomed by the birds and here 
lived mercifully among the mountaineers. Upon a sightly 
headland overlooking the Bosphorus stand the college build- 
ings of Robert College, but they are really a memorial to 
that remarkable Yankee, Cyrus Hamlin, who supported his 
theological students by teaching them to make rat-traps, 
and who sustained his mission during the Crimean War by 
baking bread for the English army. 

So you shall find it. Your holy ground is here and 
now, " the place whereon thou standest." And why? 

Because of what you can do, this place where you now 
stand is sacred. One of the most distinguished scientists 
of our day was an old man of ninety-three, helpless and 
nearly blind, living in an obscure French village. The 
largest salary he ever earned was $320 a year. And what 
was the subject which made him famous? The simple 
house-fly. But it has been said of him, " He sought only 
truth, and he achieved immortality." After the Knights of 
King Arthur had returned from their vain and foolish quest 
of the Holy Grail, and a broken fragment sat again about 
the Table Round, they looked into the face of their home- 
staying king, and were amazed to discover by the placid 
light of his countenance that he had found, while doing his 
daily duty, that which they had lost among the bogs and 
quagmires of visionary roaming. 

Says O. T. Corson : " Yes, our ship came in day be- 
fore yesterday, but we did not recognize it. We didn't 
expect to see it in this guise. In our imagination our ship 
was to have a golden prow, sails of the finest silk, and a 
diamond anchor. Besides, our ship was to be a ship of 
giant proportions, with our name painted upon it in huge 
letters of gold. So when the little craft came creeping in 



250 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

to the harbor as quietly as the dawn we had no thought of 
its being our ship. It had no silken sails, no prow of gold, 
no diamond anchor. Its furnishings are simply a pair of 
oars, just fitted to our hands. Nothing more." 

BE A JITNEY 

The new word " jitney,' ' which has come, like Lochinvar, 
out of the West, has certainly a western sprightliness 
about it. Nobody knows its origin. According to one 
authority, the word was invented by a boy ; according to an- 
other, by a convict ; and the latest story is that it was pro- 
duced by an old colored man in the South. It seems to be 
generally agreed that originally it denoted a five-cent piece, 
but it has now come to be understood as meaning an auto- 
mobile which carries passengers at the rate of a nickel 
apiece. These cars have, we are told, with almost mirac- 
ulous rapidity filled the streets of Seattle and Portland, and 
seem to be likely, to a large extent, to displace the regular 
street-cars. They have come East to Detroit and Kansas 
City and Philadelphia, and it seems likely that this unique 
and inexpensive form of public service will be as universal 
as the electric busses in London. Like many other 
mechanical contrivances, the jitney suggests similarities to 
human character. 

A jitney suggests independence. It is not confined, like 
the street-car, to rails. It is not obliged to follow any pro- 
cession of other cars exactly like itself. It makes its own 
routes, starts out in new directions, and changes its terri- 
tory from day to day. One cannot imagine a street-car be- 
ing possessed with a spirit of adventure; but a jitney is ad- 
venture itself. It is always doing something new, and, since 
that which it does is novel, perhaps it is all the more worth 



A DITCH OR A BREASTWORK? 251 

while. It goes to places which a street-car cannot reach, 
sees sights to which a street-car is blind, and accomplishes 
work which the street-car, tied to its track, never knows of. 

It is unpretending. All kinds of automobiles have been 
pressed into service as jitneys. Some of them are expen- 
sive touring-cars; others are old-fashioned two-cylinder 
affairs that have seen their best days. Upon the chassis of 
one an egg-shaped body has been built; another was evi- 
dently built to be an electric bus. If they carry signs, they 
are often hand-painted ones. Varnish is not necessary to a 
jitney. Its one virtue for which the public prizes it is, that 
it " gets there." It lacks the color, advertising signs, and 
dimensions of a street-car, but for those who wish rapid 
transit direct to their destination, it is invaluable. It gives 
this service without pride or pretension. 

It is reasonable. There has never been any good excuse 
which would explain why it would cost as much to ride in a 
public automobile to the railroad station with one's trunk 
as this trunk and its contents are worth. The jitney picks 
up the poor man as willingly as the rich, and carries the rich 
as well as the poor at the poor man's rate. It asks no more 
of people than they wish to pay for its particular service; 
it leaves them a surplus for more important things. This 
is a picture of the man who demands no more than he is 
worth and who serves all carefully and alike. 

Finally, the jitney is accommodating. It stops wherever 
it is signaled and goes wherever its patron desires, and en- 
deavors to take all, no matter how diverse are their errands 
or how aimless their destinations. So pleasant are the re- 
lations between the jitney drivers and the patrons that we 
are told that frequently passengers pay considerably more 
than they are charged, because they find the service so worth 



252 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

it. There are a few men in the world who do their work so 
cheerfully and well that the same may be said of them. 

I think it is worth while to be as independent, as unpre- 
tending, as reasonable, and as accommodating as a jitney. 



XXXII 
SEEING WHAT UNDERLIES 

MRS. EDWIN C. GRICE has been called the most use- 
ful person in Philadelphia. Whenever people want 
a good cause helped along, they turn naturally to Mrs. 
Grice, and she seldom fails them. The other day I heard 
her give a talk to a number of girls in an office. Most of 
them were stenographers and some, less skilled, do nothing 
but copying all day long. The institution for which they 
work is an educational one. Mrs. Grice told them how 
much she prized their faithfulness. She said she had a no- 
tion that something out of their swiftness and accuracy 
went into the letters they wrote to give help and comfort 
to those who read them. The thought was a pretty one, 
but not quite convincing until I remembered how much of 
the speaker's own life was spent in home duties that are 
peculiarly insistent and engrossing. Had she found that 
even her drudgery had been an aid to her public helpful- 
ness? 

I caught this statement yesterday somewhere. " Do not 
coddle yourself by thinking, ' I might have been an artist if 
I had not had to be a typist.' If you had the capacity for 
being an artist, you would have displayed it in everything 
you touched." 

The particular thing you do is the way through which 
you work out your life. If you do not work it out beauti- 

253 



254 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

fully where you are, it is not probable you could have 
worked it out beautifully anywhere else. 
Edward Carpenter says: 

"I heard a voice say: 

Now since thou art neither beautiful nor witty, it is in vain that 
thou hangest about the doors of the admired palaces ; 

For thou shalt not gain admission — thou ! 

But here outside is a plot of waste ground where canst build 
thee a little cabin — all thine own; 

And since it is close to the common road and there is no 
fence about it, 

Many a weary traveller parched with the heat of the day shall 
turn in unto thee for a cup of cold water ; 

And that shall suffice for thy life." 

"I LIKE MY JOB" 

Mr. Roosevelt was once asked, when President, why he 
was always so enthusiastic. " I like my job," he an- 
swered. 

It is not hard to like to be President of the United States, 
but Mr. Roosevelt always liked his job. When he was 
only a police commissioner, he liked it. When he was a 
member of the New York legislature, he liked it. When he 
was roughing it on a ranch, he liked that. One thing that 
should reconcile his friends if he should never be reelected 
president is the fact that nobody needs to worry about his 
happiness. He will always find it easy to like whatever he 
may do. 

Dr. Charles W. Eliot says the greatest objection he 
has to trades-unions is that, as the result of the leveling of 
wages, men cease to take an interest in their work. If this 
be true, it is a serious charge, for the world is too full of 
folks who work with both eyes on five o'clock. I suppose 



SEEING WHAT UNDERLIES 255 

there are not many men who, like Thomas A. Edison, when 
they take a vacation, would prefer to go back to the shop 
where they had been working every day. 

Let us grant that there are some kinds of work that no- 
body ought to like. I could wish there were no enthusiastic 
bartenders. I could not hope that gamblers should be 
happy. I do not see how any one could spend a joyous life- 
time sifting coal. Some kinds of work are so injurious or 
so deadening that they ought not to be liked. In choosing 
a lifework, one ought to know whether it promises joy or at 
least has a door that opens into joy. 

That having been done, we may learn to be glad in our 
work. I read the other day about a jubilant janitress who 
took great pride in her task because she was care-taker of 
the comfort of a teacher who taught forty children, of a 
doctor who healed many sick, and of a business man who 
did a great deal of good with his money, and she regarded 
herself as a partner of them all. I know of an organ- 
blower who often speaks to his organist of the music " we " 
play, as if he felt that he was in partnership with the mu- 
sician. I often "feel ashamed of slovenliness in my work 
when I watch the elevator-man in our building who deco- 
rates his elevator with flowers or flags for every holiday, 
and acts toward his passengers like a perpetual reception 
committee. 

What you do beautifully may have an even more beauti- 
ful overflow. The overflow of Mrs. Grice's patient care 
of an aged mother is that she herself mothers a great city. 
Matthew Arnold, the poet, had to make his living as a school 
inspector. The thoroughness with which he did his work 
of drudgery has never been forgotten. There was as much 
poetry in his visits to the school children as there was in 



256 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

his verses. " Real art," said the poet, William Morris, 
" is the expression by a man of his pleasure in labor," and 
he proved that he believed this by designing wall-paper. 
Thomas Chew, a young cotton-sorter from Yorkshire, was 
made janitor of the Fall River Y. M. C. A., and while so 
employed he showed an unselfish interest in the boys about 
the building. The overflow or the upshot is that he is still 
in that city, the head of the best-equipped boys' club build- 
ing in the world, with nearly 2000 members. 

The other day Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the In- 
terior, made a speech to the clerks in his department. The 
occasion was Flag Day, and Mr. Lane was trying to show 
that the daily work of this department, which perhaps con- 
tains more than common of drudgery, is worth while. 

The address may be entitled: 

THE FLAG-MAKERS 

" This morning, as I passed into the Land Office, the flag 
dropt me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling 
folds I heard it say: 'Good morning, Mr. Flag-maker.' 

" ' I beg your pardon, Old Glory,' I said, ' you are mis- 
taken. I am not the President of the United States, nor 
the Vice-President, nor a member of Congress, nor even a 
General in the Army. I am only a Government clerk.' 

" ' I greet you again, Mr. Flag-maker,' replied the gay 
voice. ' I know you well. You are the man who worked 
in the swelter of yesterday straightening out the tangle of 
that farmer's homestead in Idaho.' 

" ' No, I am not,' I was forced to confess. 

" ' Well, perhaps you are the one who discovered the mis- 
take in that Indian contract in Oklahoma ? ' 

" ' No, wrong again,' I said. 



SEEING WHAT UNDERLIES 257 

" * Well, you helped to clear that patent for the hopeful 
inventor in New York, or pushed the opening of that new 
ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, 
or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No mat- 
ter, whichever one of these beneficent individuals you may 
happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag-maker.' 

" I was about to pass on, feeling that I was being mocked, 
when the flag stopt me with these words : 

" ' You know, the world knows, that yesterday the Presi- 
dent spoke a word that made happier the future of ten mil- 
lion peons in Mexico, but that act looms no larger on the 
flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia is making to 
win the corn-club prize this summer. Yesterday the Con- 
gress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska, but 
a mother in Michigan worked from sunrise until far into 
the night to give her boy an education. She, too, is making 
the flag. Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial 
panics : yesterday, no doubt a school-teacher in Ohio taught 
his first letters to a boy who will write a song that will give 
cheer to the millions of our race. We are all making the 
flag/ 

" ' But,' I said, impatiently, ' these people were only 
working.' 

" Then came a great shout from the flag. 

" ' Let me tell you who I am. The work that we do is 
the making of the real flag. I am not the flag, not at all. 
I am but its shadow. I am whatever you make me, noth- 
ing more. I am your belief in yourself, your dream of 
what a people may become. I live a changing life, a life 
of moods and passions, of heartbreaks and tired muscles. 
Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest 
work, fitting the rails together truly. Sometimes I droop, 



258 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

for then purpose has gone from me, and cynically I play 
the coward. Sometimes I am loud, garish, and full of that 
ego that blasts judgment. But always I am all that you 
hope to be and have the courage to try for. I am song 
and fear, struggle and panic, and ennobling hope. I am 
the day's work of the weakest man and the largest dream 
of the most daring. I am the Constitution and the courts, 
statutes and statute-makers, soldier and dreadnought, dray- 
man and street-sweep, cook, counselor, and clerk. I am the 
battle of yesterday and the mistake of to-morrow. I am 
the mystery of the men who do without knowing why. I 
am the clutch of an idea and the reasoned purpose of resolu- 
tion. I am no more than what you believe me to be, and 
I am all that you believe I can be. I am what you make 
me, nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright 
gleam of color, a symbol of yourself, the pictured sug- 
gestion of that big thing which makes this nation. My 
stars and my stripes are your dreams and your labors. 
They are bright with cheer, brilliant with courage, firm with 
faith, because you have made them so out of your hearts, 
for you are the makers of the flag, and it is well that you 
glory in the making.' " 



XXXIII 
FIGHTING A LITTLE OF THE DOG AT A TIME 

**¥ F a dog is too big for you to fight the whole of him," 

•"• said Jerome K. Jerome once, " take a bit of him 
and fight that." 

It has always been an article of my creed that it never 
pays to scorn a small chance if it is in the direction of the 
victory that you are after. I have met a number of expe- 
riences that make me certain of this. 

A college student once wanted to earn his board by wait- 
ing on table at a boarding-house. He applied at the college 
hotel, but there was no vacancy. " But can't I wait on the 
waiters?" "We have somebody to wait on the waiters." 
" How about the workmen on the new addition ? " " We 
have somebody for that, too. But, say, will you scrub 
floors? " " Of course I will." So he scrubbed floors until 
there was a chance to wait on the workmen and then he 
waited on the workmen until there was a chance to wait on 
the waiters, and by and by he became a waiter himself. 
Eventually he was running his own boarding-house. 

A theological student wanted to learn to preach. " Will 
you go up on the Hudson and preach twice on Sunday and 
teach a Sunday-school class for three dollars and a half, 
and pay your own fare?" "Of course I will." So he 
did, and every step from that first Sunday until the time, 
twenty years later, when he had the privilege of being 

259 



260 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

pastor of a church of eight hundred members was in a 
direct line of consequence from that small beginning. 

A youth wanted to write for young people. He was 
offered an opportunity to conduct a single column in a 
young people's paper. Within two years he was made edi- 
tor of the whole paper. The fact that he now talks to 
200,000 other young folks every month to-day in various 
magazines comes straight from the practice that he got 
twenty-five years ago. 

I mention these experiences just by way of encourage- 
ment. You say you wish to earn money enough to get 
through college. A woman has offered you a quarter to 
shovel out her ashes. The quarter is little enough for the 
task, but it is in the direction of your ambition. You wish 
to become an athletic director some day. Your small 
brother wants you now to show his " five-man team " how 
to play football. Do it. It is a " bit out of the dog " you 
want to fight later. You hope to become a doctor or a 
lawyer. A lawyer or doctor in your town will let you use 
his library if you will tend his office for a little while each 
day. Do it. This will help you directly to the summit of 
success that now seems to loom so far away. 

You may have the notion that folks no longer climb to 
the top from the bottom. You think they start from at 
least half-way up. My observation does not teach me so. 
The other day I went through the great Wanamaker store 
under the guidance of the man who is at the head of its 
wonderful school for its younger employees. He told me 
that when he first came from England he ran an elevator in 
the store. I asked him about the heads of certain depart- 
ments. " They got all they know in our store." I asked 



FIGHTING A LITTLE OF THE DOG 261 

about the general superintendent of employees. " He 
started as a cash-boy." Only to-day I was reading in the 
announcement of the promotion of a young man to be the 
president of one of the largest printing firms in America that 
his father started him to work at twelve and that he be- 
gan work in the house a little later by feeding a hand-press 
for four dollars a week. A friend of mine used to ride out 
evenings with Henry Ford in his first car when he had to 
use what he earned in the daytime as a mechanic to buy 
gasoline to keep the car moving at night. 

None of these men could fight the whole of the mastiff at 
first, but, like a bull dog, they selected a small but favorable 
bit and fought that. 

THE LECTURE THAT WAS TWENTY YEARS 
A-MAKING 

The other day I heard a brilliant speaker address a 
school. His address was popular yet thoughtful, his voice 
was deep and melodious, his words were so well chosen 
that it was a charm to note their fitness and beauty. He 
had also an air of distinction and a face that bore noble 
lines. The students were enraptured. On the way out I 
heard one and another speak of this cultured man's power 
and charm, many of them with envy. 

I had the privilege of meeting him afterward. It seems 
that he had been called upon unexpectedly. One of the 
teachers asked him if his talk was extemporaneous. " No," 
he said with a smile, " I am afraid not. I have been twenty 
years preparing it." 

After he went away a group of us older ones fell to dis- 
cussing his splendid abilities. Each commented on the same 



262 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

things which the pupils had noticed, his voice, his manner, 
his air of distinction, his assured strength. It seemed that 
he had been rarely favored with the gifts of fortune. 

" I knew him when he was a boy," said a quiet lady teacher 
after a while, " and I can assure you that he was far from 
fortunate. He was then a poor, awkward youngster, with 
a high-pitched voice, extremely shy, and unable to speak a 
word in public." 

We exclaimed in amazement. 

" To-day," she continued, " he is princely in every way, 
but it did not come to him by inheritance. His splendid 
diction he learned by hard study, his easy manner he got 
from debating societies and political forums and lyceunis, 
his thought is his own. His grand face he won by years 
of patience and struggle, and his voice and elegant manner 
were taught him by his lovely wife." That's the way we 
make princes in America. 

EVEN IF YOU CAN'T SEE THE END, BEGIN 

There is a certain kind of young person who never be- 
gins anything unless he sees what the end is going to be. 
For this young person I myself have very little use. In 
the first place, the adventure of life is so full of improb- 
abilities that I do not understand how an inexperienced 
youth can be expected to forecast them all, and in the next 
place I cannot see that he would gain in motive power if 
he could. 

Ever since the time when Saul went forth to find the 
whereabouts of his father's asses and discovered himself 
to be a king, to the day when Pasteur pottering about sheep 
cholera discovered the germ theory of disease, young men 
have gone about their sturdy endeavors without the slightest 



FIGHTING A LITTLE OF THE DOG 263 

idea as to what the end was going to be. Like Abraham, 
they have felt a call, and have gone out not knowing whither 
they went. Like Robert Browning, they would " greet 
the Unseen with a cheer." 

And this seems to be well. It is thus that great things 
are done. Joan of Arc could have had very little idea where 
she was coming out when, as Stevenson tells us, she "left 
a humble but honest and reputable livelihood under the eyes 
of her parents, to go a-coloneling, in the company of rowdy 
soldiers, against the enemies of France." Columbus went 
to his grave under the impression that he had touched some 
outlying shores of those excellent lands of trade, the East 
Indies, which were the definite object of his early voyages. 

"If thou have time," Lowell said, " but for one line, be 
that sublime." It is astonishing to note what has been ac- 
complished by one-line lives, lives of feeble strength which 
if they had been warned by their early end would have ven- 
tured nothing. Keats, about to die at twenty-five, would 
never have become the poet of poets. Stevenson, whose 
death came at forty- four, would never have become the most 
influential force in the literature of his generation, Nathan 
Hale would have found it difficult to regret that he had 
but one life to give for his country if he had coldly cal- 
culated that he must give it when he was but twenty-one. 
I think the sublimest instance I have known of being will- 
ing to begin greatly, even if one had little time, was that 
of a classmate of mine who, though smitten with an in- 
curable disease, persisted in beginning a graduate course 
and entering upon the ministry. He was permitted to give 
to his chosen work but a single year. 

And I cannot think that our discoveries that some of 
our beginnings are not in the line of our life-work are 



264 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

wasted. I know a lovely woman whose past is as full of 
deserted enthusiasms, as a great tree is of old birds' nests. 
Her banjo, her camera, her paints, her poems, she has in 
turn smilingly laid aside. Like nests, they were full of 
color and song as long as she lived in them, they made the 
tree of life beautiful, but the tree though for a time thus 
adorned has not depended upon the nests that she built in 
its branches. Some persons will not embark upon a new 
friendship, lest it not prove lifelong, not realizing that even 
an outgrown friendship has made life richer. 

Youth is the time for beginnings. To young people 
belongs the privilege of the adventure of many initiatives. 
You have the joy of daring to tread new paths, not know- 
ing how many interesting bypaths are to open before you. 
If you could know the end you might not make the begin- 
ning. You are wise in looking ahead as far as you can. 
But just because you cannot see far you may undertake 
the great task of your fullest self-expression. 

Said Stephen Girard : " If I knew I should die to- 
morrow, I would plant a tree to-day.' ' 



XXXIV 
WHAT SAND CAN DO 

DID you ever hear of the village of Eccles in England? 
It lies on the southeast coast among the sand-dunes. 
You know something about what sand is like. It won't 
stay put. When it is dry it yields to every passing breeze 
and heaps up like snowflakes, only unlike snowflakes it never 
melts away. Of course, it moves slowly, but it is prac- 
tically irresistible. When a long stretch of sand starts 
moving inland in a great windrow it is, as some one has said, 
like a battalion of marching hills. 

About a hundred years ago sand from the shore began 
to blow through the streets of Eccles. Gradually it sifted 
over the gardens and slowly banked up against the houses. 
In ten years the people were driven out of their homes. 
Finally, even the church spire was covered, and the village 
was as much buried out of sight as Pompeii. But the sand 
has gone on, and now they are saying that perhaps Eccles 
may be habitable again, for the church spire has been seen, 
and it looks as if the sand-hills would finally form on the 
other side. 

A friend of mine tells me that somehow the most pathetic 
part of this strange event was not the banking up of the 
houses, but the throttling of the trees. These were the only 
lives that were lost in the calamity. A young oak would 
get a good start ; it seemed to thrive in the gravelly soil and 

265 



266 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

by battling with the winds; it sank its roots deeper and 
rejoiced like a warrior in battle in storm and winter. But 
a tiny foe was at work. The grains of sand alighted around 
and over it. They shut off the air and sunlight and crushed 
the stout limbs and trunk in their embrace. They literally 
smothered it to death. 

Is it not somewhat like this in the case of men? I think 
most young people stand up stoutly against great opposition 
or deep sorrow. But those whom I know who have failed, 
who gave up college for example, who went into blind- 
alley occupations, who made second choices, were not so 
much defeated as smothered. A lot of petty disappoint- 
ments, a stream of discouraging trifles, many silly jealousies 
and prejudices blew past them and stuck about them and 
shut out the light and room and they just withered up. 

The thrifty French people across the Channel had the 
same trouble as their English neighbors, and they discovered 
a remedy. They have found plants and grasses that will 
grow in the sand. Around their roots a bit of soil gathers 
and spreads. The roots act as anchors to stop the drift 
and the tops stay the blowing particles. By and by the 
dunes become not enemies, but fertile friends. 

You have your sand-dunes, too. You are right in the 
path of the drift of tiny annoyances and oppositions. You 
know what they are. Will you let them drive you out of 
your plans or stifle your growth, or will you show that 
braver and more aggressive spirit that plants signal flags 
of growing effort on the very summit of obstacles and 
makes the battlements of difficulty blossom like gardens? 

Eccles lay down and let the sand cover it. The French 
got up and planted something that would live and become 
a sand-bar. 



WHAT SAND CAN DO 267 

If Eccles did ever rouse itself, it was so irresolute and 
indolent that its motto might be stated in Chesterton's 
parody on Longfellow's Village Blacksmith: 

" Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, so I my life conduct, 
Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it 
chucked." 



THE UNFINISHED NEVER BORES 

" I can't get this lesson, and I am tired of it," said Fred 
Marston. 

His uncle heard him, and answered, " How strange ! " 
" What is strange, that I can't get this lesson ? " 
" No, not that you can't get it, but that you should be 
tired of something which you think you cannot get. I 
didn't suppose that could be true. Did Peary ever get tired 
of the North Pole? Did Grant get tired of Richmond? 
When Edison was sitting up nights with his new phono- 
graph, and it kept saying, ' Sh ' back to him when he wanted 
it to say ' S,' did he get tired of it? When every one in 
Detroit was laughing at Henry Ford and his funny little 
car, which made almost as much noise as a steamboat, did 
he get tired of it? I can see Alexander getting tired be- 
cause he had no more worlds to conquer, and Columbus 
tired because he had found or thought he had found the 
Indies, and Alexander Graham Bell tired because he could 
not invent another telephone, but I shouldn't think tired was 
the word to use in front of an unconquered task." 
Fred looked as if he were getting a new idea. 
" And I never heard you use this word before in this 
connection. You never got tired last winter when you 
were trying to make your ice-boat go, nor last summer 



268 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

when you wanted your wireless to talk. Your memory 
never complains when you are trying to fix the football 
signals. And although it is going to be a pretty hard game 
Saturday, you aren't tired of it yet, are you?" 

" I should say not ! And do you know, Uncle, if Jim 
Nichols, our substitute, doesn't show the white feather, 
we'll win." 

" You mean, if Jim doesn't get tired trying, you'll win. 
Why don't you apply the same principle to this lesson? 
If you don't get tired, you'll win ! " 

" But this is different." 

" How is it different ? I'll tell you, Fred, what is the 
only difference between lessons and life. In your lessons 
you have an examination once a term, but in life you will 
have one every day. If you get tired in front of any les- 
son or examination now, I shall be afraid for you when you 
get out into life. You know my friend Grenfell ? " 

" The great Labrador missionary? " 

" Yes. Well, once I asked him how he kept up his cour- 
age when he had so many unexpectedly hard things to face. 
He turned to me with a smile and said : * I remember the 
times when I conquered.' It may be a great deal of help 
to you some day to remember that you did not let any 
lesson get the better of you." 

" Say, Uncle, I can speak for this one." 

"Good!" 

HOW TO DISCOURAGE THE DEVIL 

It takes persistence and pluck to grow sand-barriers 
against sand-bars. 

" Our arrows will darken the sun," boasted the envoy 
from the hosts of Persia. 



WHAT SAND CAN DO 269 

The quiet answer came : " Then we Greeks will fight 
in the shade." 

When Sir David Baird's mother heard that her son was 
captured in India and chained to natives, she remarked 
placidly, " I pity the puir laddies that are chained to oor 
Dauvit." Evidently " oor Dauvit " had very much of the 
spirit of that other Scot who cried : " Lord, gie us mony 
braw enemies to fight and the pooer to enjoy them micht- 
ily." 

They tell a story of a time when the Devil was so anxious 
to destroy as many men in a short time as possible that he 
sent out his most dreadful messenger to do the work. 
This demon would simply steal up behind a man quietly and 
say, " You are discouraged," and no matter how briskly the 
man had been walking, he would usually say to himself, 
" Why, I am discouraged," and the man would give up. 
But one day when the demon told a man " I am discour- 
aged," the man refused to listen. Again he whispered it 
and the man walked more bravely than before. The third 
time he told the man he was discouraged the man turned 
around and said, " I am not discouraged." 

And the Devil himself got discouraged! 



XXXV 
WORK, NOT SHIRK 

" Now I get up and go to work, 
I pray the Lord I may not shirk ; 
If I should die before the night, 
I pray the Lord my work's all right." 

** JJL MAN is born to expend every particle of strength 

•* ^ that God Almighty has given him, in doing the 
work he finds he is fit for; to stand up to it to the last 
breath of life, and to do his best." So speaks sturdy 
Thomas Carlyle. 

This is the spirit of every true boy or girl. 

" I asked my son the other day," O. H. Benson told me, 
" if he would like to help me a bit with an easy piece of 
work out in the back-yard. He edged away, and said he 
guessed he had another engagement. A few days later I 
thought I had better approach him in a different manner, 
and so I said to him: ' Donald, I have got a piece of hard 
work I want done. It is really a man's job.' I noticed 
that Donald was drawing nearer to me. * It isn't a kid's 
work at all ; in fact, I wouldn't want to ask any kid to do 
it.' Donald was close to me by this time. ' I wonder how 
I shall get it done.' ' Say, Father, give it to me. I'll 
do it! ' And he went out and did it, I think a little better 
than I could." 

When Stover went to Yale his idea of a man was a lad 
who had gone to a select prep' school, who had money 

270 



WORK, NOT SHIRK 271 

enough so that he didn't need to talk about it and who suc- 
ceeded in getting into " the right crowd " in college. But 
one night he was invited by a rather scrubby Freshman 
over to his room. Swazey happening to have remarked 
that he had earned all his own living since he was twelve, 
Stover asked him to tell about himself. 

" ' It's pretty much the usual story. Selling newspapers, 
drifting around, living on my wits. Only I had a pretty 
shrewd head on my shoulders, and wherever I went I saw 
what was going on and I salted it away. I made up my 
mind I wasn't going to be a fool, but I was going to sit 
back, take every chance, and win out big. Lord of mercy, 
though, I've seen some queer corners — done some tough 
jobs. Up to about fifteen I didn't amount to much. I was 
a drifter. I've worked my way from Portland, Oregon, to 
Portland, Maine. I sort of got a wandering fit, which is 
bad business. But each year I tucked away a little more 
of the long green than the year before, and got a little more 
of the juice of books.' 

" The pipe between Stover's lips had gone out, but he did 
not heed it. A new life — life itself — was suddenly re- 
vealing itself; not the guarded existence of his own kind, 
but the earnest romance of the submerged nine-tenths. As 
Swazey stopped, he said impulsively: 

" * By George, Swazey, I envy you ! ' " 

As Swazey went on to say : " The big thing is to know, 
about everything that's real, and to keep on learning," it 
occurred to Stover that his own- life so far had been pretty 
nearly a blank, and in a manly way he said : 

" ' I say, Swazey, give me your hand. I'm proud to 
know you. And, if you'll let me, I'd like to come over here 
oftener.' 



272 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" He went from the room, with a sort of empty rage, 
transformed. He went out, bewildered and humble. For 
the first time since he had come to Yale, he had felt some- 
thing real.'' 

Some lazy old Hebrew slipped into the early pages of our 
Bible the idea that work is a curse, and many folks have 
excused themselves by that statement ever since. But it is 
not true. Work is the biggest manhood-making force there 
is. It is not something that poor people only have to do. 
It is what rich men who are worth while long to do, the 
only difference being, as Grace Dodge used to say, that they 
have some of their wages paid to them a little in advance. 

When Louis- Hill took over the great work left him by his 
father, James J. Hill, the railroad builder of the North- 
west, upon his death, he showed that his shoulders were 
broad enough for the task. " I had to be a self-made man," 
he said. " In spite of my father's standing, I never sub- 
scribed to ' Who's Who,' but I would like to read an au- 
thentic book called ' What's What.' " 

WORK-CHANCES IN SUMMER 

Boys, why don't you begin to show out some of the stuff 
that is in you this very next summer ? Instead of going to 
a camp where you do nothing but play ball and go in swim- 
ming, why not get up a work-camp ? 

You would need about thirty boys who would put in five 
dollars apiece and hire some fine college fellow as director 
for three months. On vacant lots or in your own back- 
yards you would each cultivate a garden plot, about 25x50 
feet, under his direction alternate mornings. In a vacant 
room in the schoolhouse on the other mornings you would 
work with tools. Each boy would bring his own tools 



WORK, NOT SHIRK 273 

and a makeshift work-bench. Afternoons you would play 
ball and go in swimming. You might for a small addi- 
tional cost all camp out together, and come into town each 
morning for your work, or cultivate land together near the 
camp and do your carpentry under the trees in the open. 

The results would be, that you would more than pay for 
your leader with the profits from your gardens and work- 
benches ; you would have an equally healthy, a happier and 
more useful vacation; and you would discover that work 
is more interesting than play. 

Such a plan has been worked out for many years by the 
Omega Boys' Club of Elmira. The boys get so interested 
that they come together even on holidays and the day the 
circus comes to town, and they play ball all the better after 
they have worked together in the fields. 

My friend, John W. Carr, the principal of the Friends' 
Central School, Philadelphia, has sent out into the world 
several sons, all of whom are strong in body, well trained 
for life and all of whom from the first year of their careers 
made good livings. " How did you do it?" I asked him. 
" By teaching them to work," he replied. " We used to 
have three rules at our house : 

" The first was : When school is out in the summer, get 
something to do, something for which you will be paid if 
possible ; 

" Second, Do something, whether you get paid or not ; 

" And the third, which we called ' Extreme Unction ' and 
never had to apply, was: If you can't find anything at all 
to do, come to father and he will find something for you." 

A boy thus educated will soon find a place for himself 
in the world. 



XXXVI 

HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 

T^OT long ago The American Boy offered prizes for 
■^ t essays by their boy readers on the subject, "How I 
Made Money Last Summer." Two hundred and eighty- 
eight boys answered and their answers proved that they 
had made a total of $8,524.80 during the season. Some of 
their answers are very interesting, as showing how Ameri- 
can boys are making good. A few of them are given be- 
low. 

EARNING MONEY SUMMER AND WINTER 

" Stock is not allowed to run at large here, so I thought 
that the owners of milk cows would like to pasture them. 
I got permission from the owner of a pasture to let the 
cows graze on his land during the day for one dollar a 
month a head. I then went to several neighbors and told 
them I would pasture their cattle, explaining how the green 
grass would enrich the milk, how the cow would get needed 
exercise, and also how the cost of feeding would be reduced. 
They agreed to pay me two dollars per month for each cow, 
I to take them at seven-thirty each morning and bring them 
home at six-thirty in the evening. In this way I succeeded 
in getting quite a little herd. 

" I obtained permission from a neighbor, who owned 
several cows, to ride his horse, which proved to be quite 

274 



HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 275 

a good little cow-pony. When my summer vacation closed, 
I had earned thirty dollars." 



" About a week before school closed in June, I thought 
of a scheme which I thought ought to be successful. While 
on my way home from school that afternoon, I went to a 
number of housewives of Dunmore, asking every one I went 
to if they would buy any huckleberries they might need, 
from me. I did this every afternoon while school was in 
session, and when it closed I was ready to start to work. 
The day after school closed, I went up to the towns in the 
mountains and bought all the berries I could get at the 
railroad stations for four and five cents a quart. When I 
got as many quarts as I could get for the day, I put them in 
crates and had them sent to Dunmore. Next day I took 
them around on the cart and sold them. Every second day 
during the season I would go out to the towns and buy a 
fresh supply of berries and the next day I would sell them. 
I got eleven cents a quart on an average, during the season. 
When the season was over, I figured out that I had sold 
nearly twenty- four hundred quarts of berries that cost me 
one hundred and twenty dollars and after deducting ex- 
penses, gave me a profit of about one hundred and thirty 
dollars for the season." 



" About a week after we had received our automobile, I 
noticed how quickly it needed cleaning, oiling, and greasing. 
I also noticed that all the garages along the roadside, no 
matter how small, seemed to be prospering, so I asked my 
father if I might use his barn for my garage. He con- 
sented, and I wrote to a New York dealer and ordered my 
supplies. This done, my brother and I set off to find cus- 



276 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

tomers. One gentleman we saw knew several of the doc- 
tors in our town and, following his advice, I called, telling 
them of my proposition. I was fortunate enough to secure 
most of them, cleaning and greasing their automobiles dur- 
ing their office hours. 

" I kept this work up until school started, when I was 
obliged to drop it. But before doing so I made arrange- 
ments for next year's work. From the latter part of July 
to the tenth of September, I sold ten gallons of oil, six 
pounds of grease, and cleaned approximately forty automo- 
biles. During this time I was amply supplied with spend- 
ing money, replaced my stocks, bought a new tire for my 
bicycle, and the balance of my profits is in my father's 



" I own a postcard camera and do my own developing 
and printing. While living in a country town this summer, 
I took some views along the river and mountains. When 
finished, I showed the postcards to a local storekeeper, im- 
mediately receiving an order for five hundred at two dol- 
lars and twenty-five cents a hundred. The total cost of 
the finished cards was about eighty-five cents a hundred, 
netting me a profit of one dollar and forty cents a hundred. 
During the entire summer, I made about one thousand post- 
cards; through the same storekeeper, I also developed and 
printed films. 

" Some of the people of the village had views of their 
houses taken, which brought me seventy-five cents a dozen 
cards. By the time Labor Day came I had about twenty- 
five dollars, all of which had been made by my camera." 



Down in Georgia a lad started up a " backyard work- 



HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 2jj 

shop." He got the idea for it from " The Boy Craftsman." 
He began by doing odd jobs for his own family, mending 
chair-legs, door-knobs, making screens for the windows, 
flower-boxes and such things. There was always some- 
thing getting out of order about the house. The boy set 
up window-boxes at every window and some simple seats 
about the trees in the yard. It wasn't long before the neigh- 
bors awakened to what he was doing and very soon hired 
him to mend broken furniture and make them some window- 
boxes. 

There are girl contractors, too. A girl out in Utah up- 
holstered some chairs for her mother so satisfactorily that 
the neighbors employed her to fix up some of their worn 
pieces of furniture. A girl in Indiana let it be known that 
she was ready to help if unexpected company came and 
there was extra work to do. In Chicago, one girl went 
among her friends and offered to take care of their pets 
when they were away for their holidays. She looked after 
canaries, cats, dogs, goldfish — anything, and earned money 
enough to take a pleasant trip herself when her work was 
over. A young housekeeper in South Carolina has a long 
list of women whose silver she cleans once a week. This 
is a task that many housekeepers dislike and they are glad 
to pay her twenty-five or fifty cents if they have a large 
amount of silver, to have her keep it bright for them. 

Vacuum-cleaners are very common but not universal. 
Two clever boys in a small town in New York State in- 
duced their fathers to advance them money to buy them a 
hand-power machine. Then on Saturdays and after school 
they started in to clean houses. The women of that town 
welcomed them with open arms, as their machine meant 
no more sweeping. They charged fifty cents an hour and 



278 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

soon had more work than they had time for. After busi- 
ness hours they cleaned some of the stores and thus filled 
up the time which the housekeepers didn't want. 

INDUSTRY, PLUCK AND EARLY RISING 

One of the most remarkable boys the writer has ever 
known is Norton Ives, late of Trinity College. At my 
request he wrote an account of his business career in high 
school. But I ought to say — what he was too modest to 
add — that he not only did the work here recorded, but he 
played football on the big Central High School team of 
Detroit, he played on its baseball team, he was a member 
of all the popular fraternities and honor societies in school, 
he stood well in his studies and he was made president of 
his class Senior year, the highest honor sought in the school. 

" When I was a young boy about fifteen years old, there 
was always something fascinating and interesting about 
our early-morning-paper boy. I used to listen to his ex- 
periences which he would tell mother when he came to 
collect, — how he had to get out in blizzards and break the 
heavy snow, how he froze his hands and feet, but most im- 
portant, how he made money to buy his own clothes and 
meet all his personal expenses, saving the surplus in the 
bank. 

" When I was in the second year in high school, oppor- 
tunity offered itself to me and I bought a morning Detroit 
Free Press route of 180 daily and 250 Sunday customers for 
$25.00. I soon made enough money to pay for the route, 
and then began putting it away in the bank. I did my own 
collecting every two weeks, paying the bill for the papers 
to the paper office. To see how profit was made, I had to 



HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 279 

pay one cent for each daily paper and received one and two 
thirds cents for one; in other words, ten cents a week. 
With 180 of these, it made a profit of 180 X 2/3 cents, or 
$1.20 a morning. Then the Sunday customers, each one 
of which cost three and a half cents and sold for five cents, 
brought single gain of one and a half cents. The Sunday 
route had 250 customers, hence a profit of $3.75. With 
four of these Sundays and usually 26 week days, the 
monthly profit amounted to approximately $50.00. Of 
course, this is theoretical, and some little money was lost 
by moving of customers, and so on. 

" The management of the route was easy if you had a 
system. My system was always to see that my alarm-clock 
was reliable to ring at 4 :30 a. m. ; to see that papers were 
delivered in good condition; to keep the route collected to 
date; to pay my bills regularly and to keep watch for any 
customers moving away and for new ones coming. Not 
unimportant is the fact tftat an early bedtime was essential 
or else you would be inclined to doze in school and at other 
places where sleepiness is a deficit. Such things as I did, 
sometimes, namely, to go to a party and return just in time 
to change my clothes for papers, were bad for my physique 
and mentality. If- you did keep reasonably early hours 
there was nothing better to make you sturdy and to make 
red blood run in your veins. I never felt better than when 
I was doing the work and then to feel that you were able 
to depend on yourself for money at the time and that you 
were laying aside money for college expenses was most 
gratifying. 

" Besides what I have mentioned it gave to me a good 
business experience in bookkeeping and finance. Very help- 



280 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

ful to me were the acquaintances which I cultivated with 
so many families, and their differences taught me many- 
things about people in general." 

GETTING MONEY FOR COLLEGE EXPENSES 

A very interesting book has been prepared by C. B. 
Riddle entitled " College Men Without Money," in which 
he gives from real life all the ingenious ways by which 
different young men and women have earned their way 
through high school and college. He says of himself that 
he entered preparatory school with 94 cents and college with 
less, and worked his way through successfully. He quotes 
one young man who took a teacher's examination and did 
a six months' term of country school, closing it seven days 
after he was sixteen years old. Bishop Hughes, of the 
Methodist Episcopal church, made considerable money when 
a young man by securing an agency for a photograph gal- 
lery in a large city not very far distant from the college he 
was attending. One young fellow, a little beyond high 
school age, it is true, worked his way through the freshman 
year at college by preaching in a local church and doing 
chores for a family with whom he earned his board. On 
Sunday morning, after he had done his chores, dressed in 
blue overalls, he would hitch their horse to the carriage for 
them to go to church. Then he would put on his best clothes 
and go and get into the pulpit and preach to them. A col- 
lege professor testifies as to the value of working for the 
Chautauqua as a means of earning money. He worked in 
this capacity until, after five summers, he was promoted to 
be advance diplomat for the bureau. 

Calvin Dill Wilson has written a practical book entitled 
" Working One's Way Through College." The writer has 



HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 281 

gone through it carefully to see what forms of effort were 
mentioned which were within the reach of a student of 
high school age. Some of those which he has discovered 
are as follows : 

Distributing literature 

Washing windows 

Tending furnaces 

Shoveling snow 

Shifting scenes 

Acting as bellboy 

Acting as councilor in a summer camp 

Lettering 

Reading meters 

Operating a stereopticon lantern 

Reporting for the local press 

Acting as agent for sporting goods 

Selling medals and pins for high schools 

Selling nursery stock 

Winning an oratorical contest. 

In general, the testimony of these young people is that 
doing unskilled work in college is unprofitable because an 
income by the hour is unsatisfactory. Dean Clark, of the 
University of Illinois, who himself earned his way through 
school and college, advises that during high school years 
any one who expects to need to work his way through col- 
lege should develop some kind of special skill which will 
make his labor profitable. He himself became an apprentice 
in the office of a printer. Another student had done some 
work for a reporter and many others have pushed their 
way through school by means of stenography. 



282 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

OUR GOVERNMENT'S INTEREST IN BOYS 

When Julius Hill of Attila, Alabama, went to Washington 
the other day congressmen stopped their work to greet him 
and his appearance created a sensation in the Department 
of Agriculture. What had he done ? He had raised 212 y 2 
bushels of corn on an acre of land, when the rest of Ala- 
bama was raising 20 bushels to the acre. He was just a 
schoolboy, but he believed, as Paul Pearson said, that " it 
is not the business of your town to put you on the map. 
It is your business to put your town on the map." 

I wonder how many of you boys know that it is now 
possible to do productive work at home that shall be di- 
rectly supervised by the Government. Under the provi- 
sions of the Smith-Lever bill large sums of money are being 
appropriated annually to be spent by the Department of 
Agriculture in encouraging gardening and farming among 
boys and domestic science among girls. Each interested 
group of boys is organized into a local Corn Club or Gar- 
den Club or Pig Club, as the case may be. Each lad accepts 
a definite project for which he receives from the department 
standardized instructions. His work is visited and super- 
intended on his own plot of ground by the county or town- 
ship agent sent out by the department. Each worker re- 
ceives monthly instructions direct from the department. 
The workers meet monthly for club sessions and have an 
opportunity to compare and compete in their work at the 
county fairs. In nearly every State, through special mon- 
eys that have been raised, the county or state prize-winners 
receive premiums of seeds, money or stock, or are given 
free excursions to the state or national capital. 

The dimensions of this new movement are already tre- 



HOW BOYS ARE MAKING GOOD 283 

mendous. There are already twice as many boys and girls 
in these government clubs as there are enrolled in the Boy 
Scout movement, and it seems probable that this plan for 
organized and productive work will literally number its 
millions. 

Is it not encouraging to know that our Government has 
discovered the importance of its boys and girls and is en- 
couraging them to make good as the future land-owners 
and home-makers of the Republic? If this work has not 
been started yet in your own neighborhood, you may learn 
all about it and may be enrolled in it by writing to O. H. 
Benson, Bureau of States Relations, Department of Agri- 
culture, Washington. 



XXXVII 
HOW GIRLS ARE MAKING GOOD 

IN the last chapter I told briefly of the plan by which our 
Government is taking an interest in the work of boys 
and girls. Let me place a little more emphasis upon what 
is being done for girls. Most of the girls go into home- 
making projects, but some of them take up gardening. Mr. 
O. H. Benson, who organized and built up this wonderful 
work, has furnished me a number of actual instances of the 
success that has come to girls through pluck and industry. 

Two sisters, Grace and Opal Holt of Deer Lodge, Mon- 
tana, each of them managing i/io acre of land in home 
garden and canning work, made the following records: 
Grace Holt made a net profit from her garden and canning 
work of $148.53. Her work was done at a cost of $40.21, 
— at this rate the net profit on an acre would have been 
$1,485.30. Opal Holt, managing the same sized garden 
plot, made a net profit of $108.86 at a cost of $35.09. At 
this rate for an acre, the amount would have been $1,088.60. 

In a written record, account is kept of exact date of 
planting, exact receipts from vegetables sold and exact labor 
account, both child and adult. This labor includes actual 
cost of production, marketing, also cost of jars in canning. 

Miss Grace Holt 

Receipts from vegetables sold* to customers $61.59 

Receipts from canned vegetables sold (to date) .35 

284 



HOW GIRLS ARE MAKING GOOD 285 

Value of vegetables for home use, fresh 19.40 

Value of vegetables for home use, canned 38.00 

Value of vegetables for home use, root crops 68.10 

Receipts from vegetable seed saved 1.30 

$188.74 
Cost of production 40.21 

Net Profit $148.53 

COST OF PRODUCTION 

• 

Rent of land $ 1.00. 

Preparation of seed bed (cost of labor) 1.60 

Cost of seed or plants 3.26 

Cost of planting (labor in doing work) 2.48 

Cost of manure 1.00 

Cost of cultivation (self) 2.00 

Cost of gathering vegetables 5.95 

Cost of cans, jars for canning 12.50 

Actual cost of canning work 5.50 

Cost of canning outfit .42 

Cost of marketing vegetables and canned product 4.50 

Total cost $ 40.21 

Miss Opal Holt 

Receipts from vegetables sold $ 39.95 

Receipts from canned vegetables sold ( l / 2 barrel cauli- 
flower pickle ; baby beets) 9.40 

Vegetables for home use, fresh and canned 91.60 

Seed saved 3.00 

$143.95 
Cost of production 35-°9 

Net Profit $108.86 

Both girls found sale for their products at market 
rates. When cauliflower fell to 1 cent a pound, they made 



286 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

a barrel of cauliflower pickle, which they have sold for 
$15.00, thus making 3 cents a pound above their labor. A 
fine example of business enterprise! 

These girls have raised and canned successfully since May, 
twenty-two varieties of vegetables. They have used only 
a wash-boiler with a rack. All directions were furnished 
by the State Leader and are the same used by 1,200 canning 
club girls in Montana. 

In a contest held Saturday, October 16th, at Deer Lodge, 
for $75.00 in prizes, furnished by a prominent local citizen 
interested in education, Miss Opal won $40.00, Grace, 
$25.00. These prizes were awarded on the 4-point basis; 
25 profit, 25 vegetable exhibit; 25 exhibit of vegetables (va- 
riety and quality) ; 25 written record. Opal scored 87, 
Grace, 85. Beth Evans won third prize of $10.00 with a 
score of 6j. 

The score was as follows : 

Opal Holt : Profit 18.75 points 

Vegetable exhibit 22.00 " 

Exhibit of canned vegetables 21.18 " 

Written story 25.00 " 

87. points 

Grace Holt : Profit 25.00 points 

Vegetable exhibit 18.00 " 

Exhibits of canned vegetables 21.16 

Written story 20.00 " 

85. points 

Miss Opal Holt has earned, including prizes at local fair, 
special contest and State Fair Trip, $140.00. Miss Grace 
has earned, including prizes, county fair, and on garden, 
$155.00. 



HOW GIRLS ARE MAKING GOOD 287 



WHAT JOSEFA PECINOVSKY HAS ACCOM- 
PLISHED 

Following is a translation of a letter from a foreign-born 
girl, Jose fa Pecinovsky, telling about her home-garden 
work. 

" As it is permitted to write in any language, I write in Bohe- 
mian as I am of that nationality. I don't know whether it is 
proper to write about a subject, as my garden comprises only one 
acre. However, I would like to ask your advice on several things. 
I am only two years in this country. My acre is divided into two 
parts; on the cultivated part I had twenty bushels of corn this 
year, two bushels of sweet corn, and one bushel of pop corn. I 
had also eight bundles of oats, two bushels of potatoes, and two 
pecks of onions. Besides this I had there all other vegetables and 
flowers. On the other half of my garden I would like to plant 
some fruit trees. I cannot buy them all at once, because I do 
not have the money, and have to go to work every day, but I 
want to buy three or four trees every year. I want to plant some 
blackberries and cranberries next to the fence and some fruit 
stem buds and joints. Thus I think that on a space of a hundred 
feet wide and two hundred feet long, I could start a nice orchard. 
On the east and south sides of the house I want to plant grapes. 
I have already four populars and five fruit trees on the place. 
Now I would like to ask you for your kindly advice if you think 
it proper to do What is my intention, and what kind of trees grow 
best in Illinois, which are the best, and where I can buy them. 

" The soil is black and somewhat sandy where good corn was 
seven to eight feet tall, and oats four and a half to five feet tall. 
The soil wasn't cultivated except for the last two years, but I 
have fertilized it for both years. Further on, I ask your kindly 
advice as to the methods of growing roses. Last year I bought 
four bushes. They grew and blossomed, but in the fall they died. 
This year I bought again six bushes, but these didn't even bloom. 
Although I took a great care of them all summer, but now they 
again died except one. It is so unpleasant for me to see a tree, a 



288 THE YOUNG FOLKS* BOOK OF IDEALS 

bush, or a flower die, as I love them so much. I suppose that 
perhaps I do not understand their culture in this country, although 
at home (that is in the old country) we used to have many roses 
and none of them died except one case when frost burned the 
bushes. These, however, died before the frost came. Perhaps they 
were not a good stock, but I paid $2.00 for them. Therefore, 
I ask for your kindly advice where to buy good bushes, and how to 
grow them. At the same time I ask you where to buy and 
when to plant flowers. I want to grow various kinds of flowers, 
which would bloom from spring to fall, but not all at once. I 
planted also some ground nuts (peanuts?) and last year I found 
about five, or six, or seven under the bush, but, as in the previous 
cases, I do not understand the method of their culture. 

" Perhaps I could buy me a book where I could learn something 
about the methods of growing trees and farm animals, but again 
I do not know where. I was going to buy me one already, but 
that one deals only with the subject of planting the trees, not 
mentioning the methods of their culture. If you will think this 
letter worth while of answering, and if you will give me the least 
suggestion or advice, I will be grateful to you, and thanking you 
ahead for your favor, I am 

" Yours respectfully 

(Signed) " Josefa Pecinovsky." 

The work mentioned above, by Grace and Opal Holt, 
was under the auspices of what are called " Mother-Daugh- 
ter Clubs." Here is a very pretty idea. A girl cannot join 
one of these clubs unless her mother joins with her, and 
each mother and daughter work as a pair. The purpose 
is to cultivate closer cooperation between mother and daugh- 
ter in home interests and activities, and the work consists 
mostly in cultivating the home-garden and canning its prod- 
uct, thus utilizing all the by-products of the farm and pro- 
viding a varied home ration for the winter months. Can- 
ning now has lost all its terrors since the department has 



HOW GIRLS ARE MAKING GOOD 289 

invented and is teaching a cold-pack method of canning 
greens, fruit and vegetables that makes it possible for two 
persons to put up hundreds of cans of winter food without 
the hot stove, with less trouble, and in the same time as was 
formerly required to put up a dozen cans by the old meth- 
ods. In Montana, where the Holt sisters live, there are 
probably 2,500 mothers and daughters working together in 
this way at this time. 

HOW THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS INSPIRE WORK 

The organization known as the Camp Fire Girls is doing 
much to restore to American girls the joys of work. We 
have narrowed too much the course of the artistic activities 
of our girls. Piano lessons have become too much the sole 
symbol of the artistic culture of girls. Drawing, sculpture, 
needlework, the making of simples, the baking of bread, 
the tending of a home, which were once the life of true 
queens and ladies, have been neglected. Remember what 
Ruskin said was the right work of a " lady " : 

" Cooking means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, 
and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the 
Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, 
and fruits, and balms, and spices ; and of all that is healing 
and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it 
means carefulness, and inventiveness, and watchfulness, and 
willingness, and readiness of appliance; it means the econ- 
omy of your great-grandmothers, and the science of modern 
chemists; it means much tasting, and no wasting; it means 
English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hos- 
pitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly 
and always ' ladies ' — ' loaf -givers.' " 

The Camp Fire Girls are bringing such things back, and 



2 9 o TlfE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

many a girls' camp this summer will have its handicraft 
exhibit, or baskets and pottery and leather work and pre- 
serves and bread and dainty fabrics wrought with stamping 
and embroidery. Song, too, the most expressive of the 
arts, and literary composition are cultivated beside the camp 
fires. 

But the Camp Fire Girls organize a girls' daily home life, 
and this I think is the best thing of all. We cannot get back 
to the simplicity of olden home conditions, but if girls retain 
the home-loving spirit then humanity will always have all 
that is essential to the real home. We have been a bit fear- 
ful that we were going to lose this. There have been in- 
fluences abroad to cause us to believe that woman's work is 
not beautiful. Now much of a man's work is not in itself 
attractive, but man has surrounded his work with a certain 
glamour, so that he is contented in it. The fact that he 
usually works in groups makes it easier for him to do so. 
There has been no corresponding glamor about woman's 
work, and the fact that the housewife works much alone has 
made it harder to find poetry in her task. 

Into the camp conducted by Dr. and Mrs. Gulick, who 
organized the Camp Fire Girls, there came last summer a 
forlorn and motherless baby. Mrs. Gulick wondered if the 
girls would think the baby a bother, but they gave it such 
patient and motherly care that she told me she was prepared 
to advise that no girls' camp is really complete unless it 
takes a real baby along! 

BECOMING A FIRE MAKER 

The Camp Fire Girls have brought back the beauty that 
lies in the woman's task by finding the word that is its most 
beautiful symbol. Woman is the light-bringer, the fire- 




Mothercraft: the New and the Eternally Old Vocation. 



HOW GIRLS ARE MAKING GOOD 291 

maker. Each Camp Fire Girl may earn the privilege of 

breathing this sweet and solemn desire : 

«« 

" I purpose to bring 
My strength 
My ambition 
My heart's desire 
My joy 

And my sorrow 
To the fire 
Of humankind. 
For I will tend . . . 
The fire that is called 
The love of man for man, 
The love of man for God." 

We have always known that every girl is a poet, but they 
have been mute so long because we have not known how to 
give them self-expression. Each Camp Fire Girl, as you 
know, chooses for herself a new name, an emblem of what 
she chooses to be. And you know how meaningful some 
of these names have proven ; " Ce-ki-ca-ti " — to make fire 
for some one; " Hiiteni " — life, more life; " Pi-ki-da " — 
to be glad; " Wa-hau-ka " — to do things well; " Su-ni " 
— doing more than is asked. Each girl, too, chooses for 
herself a symbol in nature, one, the sun on the water, 
another, the evening star. And each works her symbol 
into all that she makes, — her headdress, her pottery, her 
ceremonial gown, perhaps even her bread. It is easy to be- 
lieve that she will find it easier to weave them into all her 
life. 



XXXVIII 

LOOKING AHEAD 

^TpHE funniest thing that I have read lately is the de- 
■*■ scription of William Baxter's tea-party in Booth 
Tarkington's " Seventeen." William's mother has sug- 
gested that he might invite a few friends in to meet his 
adored " Miss Pratt," who is visiting town, and have some 
iced tea and cakes. Baxter has rushed up to change his 
collar, and on the way has wrath fully snatched down an 
engraving of the Battle of Gettysburg, which he does not 
think worthy of Miss Pratt's inspection. He leaves it on 
the floor at the foot of the stairs. 

As he rushes down to meet his guests he plunges into the 
middle of the engraving, and slides. The result is that he 
flees upstairs for repairs, and finds that his trousers are 
hopeless. Wilting another collar in his excitement, he 
breaks the last collar button in the house, and has to fasten 
the collar to his shirt with some string. All his white 
ducks are soiled, and he has recently sat down in his gray 
trousers on a sunset that his little sister has just painted. 
He scrubs these into a disorganized condition, throws them 
aside and, after heaving things around, jumps into the 
winter suit that he finds in the attic. 

Just as he is about to join his guests once more he finds 
it necessary to chase a mongrel that is after Miss Pratt's 
lap-dog. Assured that the coast is finally clear and that 
he looks all right, he comes in to his party, only to discover 

2Q2 



LOOKING AHEAD 293 

the familiar truth that " Time flies " — and that all the 
young folks have gone home to supper ! 

In his despair he sinks into a chair, but utters a terrible 
cry and gets up. " Again Jane had painted a sunset she 
had not intended." 

A Spanish proverb explains William's " unlucky day " : 
" He that won't look ahead looks behind him with a tear 
in his eye." 

" It is the cool who inherit the earth." 

This applies nowhere more emphatically than in the mat- 
ter of getting ready for life. 

Probably the most important single thing for a youth to 
consider in studying the matter of vocation is an under- 
standing of the requirements of each vocation in the way of 
preparation. 

PREPARATION-STUDY 

Have you ever thought how your record in high school 
may prove your definite preparation to get your first job? 

Let us suppose that you are suddenly called, at the close 
of your high-school course, to appear before the president 
of a company to whom you have applied for a position. 
You desire to make a good impression, of course. You 
ought to remove your hat upon entering the room, to walk 
forward in a manly way, to look him in the eye cheerfully, 
and to sit without sprawling in a chair before him. If you 
have been in the habit of doing all these things in school 
days, you will do them. now effectively and easily, but if 
you are doing them for the first time, you will forget at 
least one of them and you will do the rest awkwardly. The 
president has your letter of application in his hand. If 
the handwriting is clear, the spelling correct, the style di- 



294 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

rect, and the spacing attractive, he will be favorably im- 
pressed. But these things cannot all come into your letter, 
unless they have been a familiar part of your letters while 
you were in school. He may ask you for a sample of your 
work, and now the books you kept in your business course 
or the note-book in Chemistry have to be at once produced. 
No eagerness to-day to get the position and no regrets for 
the past can erase the blot you made three years ago when 
you spilled over the ink-bottle or the scrawls you made 
inside the covers. 

Even a high-school boy has a record, and what you are 
known to be on the street and in the hotel and at the amuse- 
ment park may all come up against you or for you the 
moment you try to enlist in the army of the earnest men 
who work and employ workers. 

It is a proud hour when a young man comes up to such 
an ordeal, and finds himself eager to be investigated. 

After all, what your future employer is most anxious 
about is not what you know but what you are. " We will 
teach him the things we wish him to know," said one such 
man. " What I want you to do is to help me find the right 
kind of a fellow." 

Here are some questions about one's high-school record, 
suggested by Frank P. Goodwin of Cincinnati: 

Why are you in high school ? 

Why did you select the particular course of study in which 
you are working ? 

Why do you need a high-school education? 

How do you expect this school to help you prepare for 
your life work? 

Are you in the course that will best prepare you? 

Autumn examinations are over. Perhaps you failed. 



LOOKING AHEAD 295 

Why? Were yo.u prepared? Have you done your duty? 
If you are to blame, where is the difficulty? 

Do you lack earnestness of purpose and determination? 

STUDYING COLLEGE REQUIREMENTS 

One very practical point in the choice of one's course of 
study is to be certain that the particular course one is pur- 
suing will be acceptable to one's chosen college or will lead 
toward one's chosen vocation. 

I often find that, although college catalogues are filed 
in the office of the high-school principal or in the library, 
where they are accessible to all, very few boys and girls 
who are looking forward to college have consulted them to 
find out what studies they should pursue in order to enter 
their chosen institution. A boy, for instance, told me the 
other day that his uncle had left him a legacy so that he 
might enter the classical course at Princeton. " I under- 
stand," he added, " that they require some Greek there. I 
have not taken any Greek yet, but maybe they won't de- 
mand it by the time I am ready to enter." I said to him 
that, as Princeton had been requiring Greek for nearly 
one hundred and fifty years, I thought he was taking 
rather long chances in expecting to enter that course with- 
out it. 

How foolish and needless to lose time in this way! I 
am reminded of two men who came running at top speed 
toward the station, where the train that would run them to 
town in a few minutes was steaming, ready to start. As 
they reached the station door the whistle sounded and the 
train was off. Gasping for breath, one said to the other, 
with cheery good humor : 

" Eh, Jim, tha didna run fast enough." 



296 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Yea, Ah did," Jim instantly replied. " But Ah didna 
start soon enough." 

STUDYING IN THE LINE OF ONE'S FUTURE 

If it be true, as popular legend has it, that St. Peter sits 
at the celestial gate to examine persons who wish to enter, 
most of his time must be spent in listening to people who 
tell him how they meant well. But heaven is not the place 
that is paved with good intentions. A . popular English 
essayist wrote an article once " On the Great Merit of What 
We Meant to Do," but all he proved is that it is easy to be 
a well-wisher and that nobody is willing to give us credit 
for our great intentions except ourselves. 

I had an interesting experience last winter. I was in 
four towns in northern Ohio talking to the high schools. 
After my talks I asked the privilege of having private in- 
terviews with any of the boys who might like to do so. I 
thought perhaps, since they would not see me again, they 
might tell me of things they would not speak of to their 
teachers. They came to me by ones and twos and threes. 
I think I must have conversed with at least a hundred in all. 
I told each one to talk about anything that was in his mind, 
any problem he wished to present. Every boy but one 
wanted advice about what he was going to be in the world, 
about his future vocation. 

In order to understand each boy's tastes and abilities, I 
asked each one what he wanted to become. As these were 
market towns, the majority were planning to go back to 
their fathers' farms. Nearly all the rest would become 
doctors or lawyers or engineers. In order to learn whether 
my advice had been wise, I asked the principals about a 
few of these boys afterwards. I was a bit discouraged by 



LOOKING AHEAD 297 

some of the things they told me. One boy who said he 
would be a doctor had dropped his Latin, several who wished' 
to become engineers were not taking mathematics and some 
of the would-be lawyers had shown neither the industry nor 
patience that alone promises success in that crowded pro- 
fession. What prophecies may be seen here of misdirected 
efforts, mistaken ambitions and broken hopes. It will not 
be needful for some to wait for a future life to know the 
hell of good, but witless, intentions. 

PREPARATION LOST THROUGH LEAVING 
SCHOOL 

It is natural for you to be impatient with the old restric- 
tions. School may seem monotonous ; life beckons. Some 
of the subjects of study appear to be useless and uninter- 
esting, and you have read about geniuses who escaped school, 
or men of attainment who were not educated. 

Work appears to you a fine adventure. You meet your 
old classmates who have gone to work. They have an air 
of importance. They tell you of their experiences ; this one 
drives a motor-truck or a fierce pair of horses down through 
the wholesale district ; that one is all day amongst the noise 
and power of great machines; another wears his best 
clothes every day and sells ribbons to ladies. And all of 
them jingle money in their pockets. It seems to you that 
your life is a very drab one; you do not have such expe- 
riences as these, and you do not have any money of your 
own either. 

But something must be said upon the other side. While 
in certain lines of work there is education in the work it- 
self , this is almost never true if one leaves school too early. 
The boy or girl who drops his education between fourteen 



298 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

and sixteen, never even gets started. Seventy-five per cent, 
of them are never anything more than drifters. They pass 
from one cheap employment to another, liking none and 
being fit for none, and are " job hoboes." " They are given 
work," says Meyer Bloomfield, " only because nobody else 
is in sight or so cheap." In the end, tired out with a life- 
time of uninteresting and uneducative employment, they 
are fit for nothing and are known as " unemployables." 

If you propose to leave school for no better reason than 
that you " don't like it," are you sure that you will meet 
nothing that you don't like at work? If it is because school 
is hard, is work never hard? If it is because you want 
money, are you certain that there may not be more money 
for you later if you remain in school long enough to be 
trained to earn money? 

Also you should realize that one who leaves at the door 
of high school is pretty certain always to remain an unedu- 
cated man. You at this point have had no science, no lan- 
guage but your own, know no history except that of your 
own country, have read almost no great literature, and have 
had few experiences in mastering your hand and using your 
brain. You don't even know how to think hard; all you 
can do yet, before you are trained, is, as the colored brother 
said, to " sagittate your cerebellum." 

The complete unsatisf actor iness of a partial education is 
shown in the remark made by a girl who was asked which 
part of her schooling was of the most service to her. 
" Nothing helps me much because I had so little of it." 

THE PREPARATION OUR TIMES DEMAND 

No doubt our age requires more of its coming workers 
than has any age before us. Ours is a time of great enter- 



LOOKING AHEAD 299 

prises, and, as President David Starr Jordan says, " It takes 
larger provision for a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope 
than for a trip to the Isle of Dogs." Life's speed has quick- 
ened, and the time demands men who can work faster and 
whose work does not have to be done over. The age de- 
mands of all its workers, professional and mechanical, skill. 
Germany has become our next-door nation, and a race, 
docile to discipline and educated to accuracy, industry and 
cooperation, is coming into competition with ours, which 
has been too much a race of Jacks-at-all-trades. The man 
who " can do 'most anything " to-day is good for nothing. 
The age demands self-mastery. Vocation after vocation is 
being closed to men who drink and use tobacco. The nar- 
rowing of opportunity to the negro race in the North, is due 
not entirely to race prejudice, but to the fact that business 
can afford to use only a race that is characterized by self- 
control. 

The age calls for leadership. All the high places are 
fairly begging to be filled. The crowd is at the foot of the 
ladder. We cannot, as they do in England, look for a clan 
of lords to lead, who are frankly known as " the directing 
classes." Every generation is selecting individuals who are 
worthy to direct it. To lead in work and to govern men, 
these are the tasks for which the highest rewards are now 
offered. It is true that the age does not demand leaders 
only. It needs a great many men who can be led. It 
wants men whom it can use. Sometimes it seems as if it 
wanted to use them up, merely. Many of us were intended 
to fill such places, but no man, who knows that he lacks 
initiative or great talept, needs to look forward to being 
nothing but a tool in an industry. Whatever one's occupa- 
tion, he can prepare himself to be an interesting companion 



300 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

to the one with whom he will always spend most of his time 
— himself. 

It is true that, beyond the special occupation in which one 
uses his hours of toil, the age is going to need men of sanity, 
who are so well balanced by the habit of study and research 
that they cannot be swept off their feet ; men who are prob- 
lem-solvers, who will neither be dismayed nor overcome by 
the new situations which the nation continually faces; and 
men of motive power, who are set a-going from inside, in- 
stead of having to be pushed from behind. 

Just as it is easy to see what kind of men are going to 
be wanted, so it is not hard to foresee what kind are going 
to be discarded. There is to be less room than ever for the 
merely " smart " man. Work to-day is becoming stand- 
ardized; each worker has his special task requiring trained 
skill, and only a very few merely " handy " men are required 
in any job or profession. It is more and more becoming 
true that the values of men, judged by their products, are 
being recorded on card catalogues and recognized in wages, 
not only in shops but even in places where such records are 
harder to estimate. America is the one land which has as 
little use for the idle rich as for the idle poor, and its one 
demand of those who attempt to do its work may be put in. 
the slang phrase, " deliver the goods." 

This is equally true of girls. Is there usually any 
deeper tragedy than for an uneducated girl to marry an 
educated man? The untrained girl has usually decided to 
limit her choice of a life partner to the list of uneducated 
men. But the choice of a husband is the least of reasons 
for the college education of girls. We admire women for 
their charm, men for their strength. Beauty fades, and 



LOOKING AHEAD 301 

the only way a woman may win permanent admiration is 
by cultivating something that is permanently admirable. 
Woman, too, has her own sacred calling, in relation to chil- 
dren. Next to the tragedy of a mismated marriage is that 
of an uneducated woman who deliberately decides that she 
will remain such that her children shall inevitably outgrow 
her. It means some lonely later years. It means also that 
she deprives them of the constant stimulus that is possible 
only from an alert and well-trained mind. But of course 
the most persuasive reason for an education is what it will 
mean to one's own self. With the emancipation of woman 
from drudgery, she is more free even than man for leisure, 
for thought, and for mental and social activity. The dreari- 
ness, the emptiness, even the occasional wickedness of the 
lives of many modern women is due to the fact that, through 
lack of cultivation, they are poor company for themselves. 
The bridge-fiend, the social struggler, the woman of no- 
torious life, is usually the one who is perishing because she 
has no resources within herself. 

KEEPING PREPARED THROUGHOUT LIFE 

Some of the preparation that has best fitted people for 
emergencies, Margaret Slattery says, has been unconscious. 
The people themselves never dreamed that a great moment 
would call them and that they would be able to meet it. 
That boy who drove the grocery wagon had no idea that 
Tuesday morning, that a great moment was about to come 
in his life. He went into the kitchen of the big beautiful 
house as usual to take his order for groceries. While he 
was writing, a nurse-maid, frantic with fear, rushed into the 
kitchen. A five-year-old child, a sweet, beautiful, little girl, 



302 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

had taken sulphuric acid carelessly left on the sideboard. 
They had telephoned for doctors, but none had yet arrived 
and the child seemed to be dying. 

" What did she take ? " asked the boy hurriedly. The 
moment he heard the name he began pounding on the kitchen 
wall, with a knife and stick of wood tearing away the plas- 
ter. " Give it to her ! " he said. " It may save her. 
Quick!" 

The moments before the physician came seemed hours. 
With all his knowledge and skill he went to work. By 
night they knew the child would live. 

When the father tried to thank the physician he shook 
his head. " Don't thank me," he said. " Who gave her 
the plaster? I should have been too late." 

Then the father learned for the first time of the grocer's 
boy. Next day in the interview he had with the boy it 
came out that on an old calendar which had hung in the 
store for years was a printed list of poisons and their anti- 
dotes. He thought it would be a good thing to know and 
had taken pains to remember it. 

How little he dreamed that he should meet an emergency 
that morning. But it found him ready. His whole future 
will be different because of it. He had helped save a life. 

He is no longer a grocer's boy, but has been placed in 
a position which offers great opportunity to the right per- 
son. 

The emergency found the grocer's boy prepared, because 
he had the habit of seeing and remembering what he saw, 
of using spare minutes for gaining knowledge which might 
prove useful. 

It is not only the knowledge you gain in your regular 
work in school or wherever you are that counts, but that 





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LOOKING AHEAD 303 

which you gain for yourself and save up to use some day, 
as did that girl who, on Brooklyn Bridge, slipped her hands 
into her rubbers, stood on a board and lifting the live wire 
that had already claimed one victim, pulled it aside where 
it could do no further harm. When they sought an ex- 
planation as to why she, out of all that crowd, knew what 
to do, they learned that she had read it in a book on her 
employer's desk and thought it a useful bit of knowledge 
worth remembering. 

The importance of winning recognition by preparedness 
was illustrated by an incident told me on a car by a young 
business man. He is assistant to the president of an auto- 
mobile factory. The directors were in session the other 
day, discussing the issuing of additional stock. An im- 
portant question came up, and he was summoned in to an- 
swer it. 

"Will it be necessary/' asked the president, "for us, in 
issuing this new stock, to mark the stock certificates * Series 
B'?" 

" It will not," said the young man, and he retired. 

Some of the directors were sure such an easy answer 
must be wrong, and so they called up a trust company whose 
daily dealings were with companies and business of this 
class. The clerk told them that the answer was incorrect. 
Overnight, however, the clerk looked the matter up, and the 
next day reversed his own decision. 

" How did you happen to know the answer," I asked my 
friend, " when it was not directly in your line of business, 
and why was this man wrong whose business it was to 
know?" 

" Because I always try to know a little more than I have 
to, and he doesn't," was his terse answer. 



304 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

A moment later it developed that my friend had been tak- 
ing lessons all winter in expert accountancy. 

" Why do you do this? " I inquired. " You do not use 
it in your present position." 

" Twenty years from now," said this man of vision, 
" some man twenty years younger than I will be hunting 
for my job, and if I don't know more than he does, he will 
get it." 

As one successful middle-aged business man put it : "I 
am interested in reading to-day what men who do not read 
will be finding out ten years from now." 



*« 



XXXIX 

THE PRACTICE THAT MAKES PERFECT 

"PRACTISING is no joke! " The words were spoken 

•■■ by a boy of sixteen as he placed his violin on the 
piano, stretched his arms and his fingers, walked two or 
three times around the room and then taking up his instru- 
ment again went patiently and carefully over and over the 
exercises, page after page. 

That night an interested audience that filled the hall lis- 
tened to a musician who had come from the city to play 
for them, but eagerly waited for the boy who had spent his 
sixteen years among them. He had been for some time the 
pupil of the greatest musician in the orchestra, and to-night 
was to make his first appearance as what one of the girls 
called " a real solo violinist." 

They greeted him with great applause, then settled back 
to listen. At first it was with interest in the player, but in a 
few moments they forgot their neighbors, the boy, every- 
thing but the exquisite tones of the violin; soft and low, 
then clear and high like the voice of a happy child, then loud 
and majestic like a chorus of wonderful voices it rang out 
over the audience and died away again, sad and full of 
pleading. 

When at last the boy stopped playing there was a mo- 
ment's perfect silence — then how the hall rang with ap- 
plause! It was a great moment for the boy! 

305 



306 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

When the concert was over and friends stood talking with 
his parents, some one said enthusiastically, " Marvelous tal- 
ent! Wonderful! Where did he get it? " 

Before the mother could reply the great musician, proud 
of his pupil, said in his quaint English, " Yes, ze great tal- 
ent one-fourth explains, but ze practice, faithful every day 
— that explains ze music. Ze boy will one day play all over 
ze world. He can practise ze scales! " 

You should have a right sometime to charge for all this 
practice. " And do I understand, Mr. Whistler," asked a 
purchaser of the great artist, "that you ask two hundred 
pounds for knocking off this — this little thing?" "No, 
I ask .two hundred pounds for the experience of a lifetime.' , 

In the world of business men are, generally speaking, paid 
small sums for what they do, large sums for what they 
know. The difference is, brains and practice. 

ABOUT GETTING PAID FOR LEARNING 

There may be any one of a number of reasons why you 
should receive small wages and slow promotion while you 
are learning how. 

It may be that you are not worth any more than you are 
getting. Perhaps you break or spoil almost as much as 
you make or improve. It may be that your employer finds 
that your work does not net him any profit. As Gowin 
and Wheatley put it, if your employer bought knives at 50 
cents and sold them at 35, he could not expect to make 
money. No more can he afford to raise the wages of any 
employee upon whom he is losing money. From the stand- 
point of profit he has to figure knives and boys alike. 

It may be that he can get somebody else to do your work 
as well as you for even less money. And if it should chance 



THE PRACTICE THAT MAKES PERFECT 307 

that you have been with him some time and have not learned 
much, he may even prefer to try a new but more hopeful 
lad at the same wages, instead of you. Gerald Stanley Lee 
says that the only way one can lift his employer off his 
back is to make his back worth so much that his employer 
can't afford to get on it. 

It may be that he would like to pay you more, but that 
just now business is in such condition that he cannot afford 
to. In such a case, you have to consider whether he is such 
a wise and kind employer that you ought to stand by him, 
or whether he is so likely to be permanently unsuccessful 
that you ought to change positions. 

It may be that you are not giving your best for your 
money. Perhaps you are lazy. I heard of two boys who 
asked their employer for something. One asked for more 
work ; the other for a vacation. Both got what they asked 
for, but the vacation was permanent! 

THE PLATEAUS OF PRACTICE 

A skilled tennis-player noticed that after he had made 
any notable gain in his playing his form continued about 
the same apparently for a time, then it took another sudden 
leap upward, followed by another level. He studied this 
curious fact in other activities, and found it to be true else- 
where. He called this " the plateau theory of growth." 
He discovered also that the last hours on the plateau were 
the hours when he was getting the ability for the next rise. 
The time when he seemed to be stationary was just the 
time when he was about to make a spring upward. The 
movement upward was simply the using up of the skill that 
he had been gaining by practice. It was only the plod that 
shot up the record. 



308 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

There is a lot of loose thinking about what is practical 
in school. "Why should I study this or that?" exclaims 
the student who dislikes the drudgery of Latin or algebra. 
" I shall never use it when I get out into life." Why 
should you keep the training rules in football? They have 
nothing to do with the playing of the game. You never 
use them on the field. You know why. You couldn't be 
depended on, if you did not know them. They give you 
such self-mastery that you are sure and certain in every 
play. Some such thing comes out of studies that are not 
" useful." They at least make of you a man who can do a 
thing whether he likes it or not. " Dad " Elliott, the old 
football player, says : " Employers are asking of the men 
who come from the colleges, not only i How well can he 
do it ? ' They also want to know, ' Can he be depended on 
to do it ? ' " Perhaps the Latin and algebra, like the play- 
ing rules, give you that grip on yourself so that you will 
always be on the spot when you are expected to be. 

" How did you think to do it?" Fred Lewis Pattee is 
citing the engineer who, running at sixty miles an hour 
round a curve, saw an obstacle on the track and quicker 
than thought threw the throttle open and crashed through 
it. Experts declared that no other course could have saved 
the train. 

" I didn't think," was the reply; " it did itself. Twenty- 
five years ago I planned that if I ever met an emergency 
like this, I would meet it in just this way." 

That is what practice does in a crisis. It compels. But 
it does not compel unless it has been won. 

" Good, Better, Best ; 

Never let it rest, 
Till your Good is Better 

And your Better's Best." 



XL 
MAKING UP YOUR TIME-TABLE 

*'TJf OW is it that Fred always has time for anything 

■*■ ■"■ special that he wants to do, while Mary seems to 
be a good deal busier, but is always behindhand and always 
looks red in the face as if she were hurrying to catch up? " 

" I have often wondered about it, too. I suppose Mary's 
day has just as many hours as Fred's has, but he seems to 
have plenty in which to do all that he wants to, while Mary 
is generally behind her schedule." 

" Isn't that just the trouble? " inquired the other. " Has 
Mary got any schedule? Doesn't she need to make up a 
■timetable?" 

This actual dialogue brings out an important point. 
Why ought a schoolboy or school girl, who is not yet really 
into the world's work, to be forever so hurried and behind- 
hand? 

Truly this world is a fascinating place and each day 
presents such fresh opportunities that we are like children 
tempted with new toys while our hands are still filled with 
old ones. We shall have to paraphrase that oft-quoted 
verse of Stevenson's and make it read: 

" The world is so full of a number of things 
It keeps a good many dancing in rings." 

But nobody is really rich for grasping at what he cannot 
use when he is still busy trying to keep up with what he 

309 



310 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

has not yet used. It reminds one of an old lady in Clovelly, 
England, who has collected china teapots until her guests 
tumble over them, but who has not kept her roof mended. 

CLUTTERED LIVES 

Isn't the trouble with our days simply that they are 
cluttered f They are like houses that are crowded with 
things of which their owners are tired, but that they have 
not the courage to throw away. So they have to spend 
much of their time dusting them off. When I think of 
the average crowded day of many a young friend of mine 
I am reminded of that delightful verse that described the 
living-room of an English nobleman of the olden time: 

" His dining-room was long and wide, 

Good man ! Old man ! 
His spaniels lay by the fireside; 

And in other parts, d'ye see 
Crossbows, tobacco-pipes, old hats, 
A saddle, his wife and a litter of cats; 
And he looks like the head 

Of an ancient family." 

A day of yours is perhaps very much like such a room. 
Here is a perch for a useless fad, and there is a nest for 
an outgrown hobby. The lesson that you haven't studied 
jostles the book that you haven't read. In the midst of all 
this here are you, too busy to take a nap and wearily flutter- 
ing to and fro, like a bat at nightfall, never landing any- 
where. 

WHAT YOU NEED IS A HANDLE 

Now if you are living a life that cannot be fitted to a 
timetable, something is the matter with it. It may be that 



MAKING UP YOUR TIME-TABLE 311 

it is like one of those catch-all bags that women use when 
they go shopping, and that all the trouble is that you haven't 
any handle for it. More likely the difficulty is that you 
have got more in the bag than it will hold. Don't live a 
catch-all life. 

Do you want to have the handle that will carry your 
whole day? Are you willing to grapple with this diffi- 
culty, and learn, as Arnold Bennett says, " How to Live on 
Twenty-Four Hours a Day " ? 

The first thing I have to suggest is that you make a sched- 
ule, a timetable if you will. " Dad " Elliott, the ex- football 
player, in his little book, " Student Standards,'' suggests 
that we begin by checking up on a piece of paper so as to 
keep track of the way our time has usually been spent. 
Perhaps yours would look something like this before you 
fill in the hours : 

Sleep 

Meals 

Study 

Recitations 

Exercise and Sport 

Social Life 

School Activities 

"Fooling" 

Unaccounted for 

The next thing to do is to cut out the things you have 
no use for. Surely " fooling " would go first. Then when 
you analyze the time that was unaccounted for I would not 
be surprised if you would have to make the confession that 
the old Maine loafer made who spent his time mostly 
around the stove in the grocery store. When asked what 
was his occupation he replied : " I jest set and think — and 



312 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

sometimes I jest set." Can't we safely cut out the " jest 
settin"'? ' 

I have watched enough time wasted in one Southern vil- 
lage in one week " jest settin'," to start a new French Revo- 
lution or engineer a trip to the South Pole. 

PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST 

After this it is time to pick out what is really worth while, 
and thus put first things first. Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, who 
was so many years the friend of girls interested in domestic 
science, made a schedule of what she thought due propor- 
tions that was so ingenious that nobody who has once read 
it can very easily forget it. She called her chart " The 
Feast of Life," and you will notice that the initials of the 
items spell the word feast : 

F Food, one-tenth of our time. 

E Exercise, one-tenth of our time. 

A Amusement, one-tenth of our time. 

S Sleep, three-tenths of our time. 

T Tasks, four-tenths of our time. 

This is pretty fair for proportion, isn't it ? Suppose you 
go over your last week's schedule again and see how you 
come out. I imagine that in the case of a good many high- 
school students who " go in for " the usual activities the 
chart would read somewhat like this. ( Remember that one- 
tenth of a day is almost two hours and a half) : 

Food, one-tenth. 
Exercise, one-tenth. 
Amusement, five-tenths. 
Sleep, two-tenths. 
Tasks, one-tenth. 



MAKING UP YOUR TIME-TABLE 313 

I may have overestimated the time for " food " and " exer- 
cise " a little, especially if we count all playful exercise un- 
der " amusement." It does look a little overbalanced at one 
point, doesn't it? " Sleep " and " tasks " have to loan lib- 
erally of their share, and it is a bit of a question when 
" amusement " is going to pay it all back. On Sundays, 
perhaps ? 

Doesn't it make one a little ashamed to look at a day 
five-tenths given to amusement, when the men who really 
count give as much as that to worth-while work? Of 
course we excuse ourselves by saying that now is the time 
to play, and there there will be time enough to work later 
on, and all that. Maybe so. But the only record anybody 
has at any given time is the total of his separate days, and 
if every day so far is fifty per cent, play, then it all adds 
up like that. 

LIFE IS A MOSAIC 

Even a schedule does not quite cover the point. To a 
locomotive one hour of a time-table is as good as another, 
but not so with the hours of a man's day. The hour after 
midnight is, let us say, the most worthless one of the day. 
Nobody ever did a fine task at that hour, unless it was a 
fireman or policeman, in some emergency. It is good only 
for sleeping. Every hour before noon is worth two hours 
after noon, and every hour before supper is worth any two 
after supper. Perhaps if we were going to get an accurate 
idea of a day instead of picturing it as twenty-four boxes, 
all the same size, we ought to see it as more like a nest of 
boxes, each fitting into the next, the biggest at the beginning 
in the morning and the smallest at the end. A well-spent 



314 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

day would be one in which we filled the biggest boxes with 
the best treasures. 

If a day were a tile floor made up of pieces all of the same 
size and value, the best art would be to collect as many 
pieces as possible, but a day is rather like one of those lovely 
bits of Venetian mosaic jewelry in the making of which one 
searches long to find one rare jewel for the center, while he 
places carefully around it a few selected stones of varying 
sizes. The central jewel once found, the rest of the stones 
find their places. So the art of a day is not merely to put 
first things first, but to take the best hours for the best 
things. 

What is the best thing that happens every day ? That is, 
what is there in each day that one can least afford to miss ? 
I can hear you give a good many answers — breakfast, base- 
ball, " movies," " hikes," evening chat with father or 
mother, or a rousing good book. But let us leave the an- 
swer to an impartial stranger, say a visitor from Mars, who 
could look at everything we have, indoors and out, with 
fresh eyes. He might say, sunsets, if he had an eye for 
uplifting beauty, or he might say, morning, if he rejoiced 
in fresh energies. But his most likely answer would be: 
The definite thing that you are now most living for. But 
can you say what this definite thing is ? 

Gerald Stanley Lee illustrates the need of definiteness of 
purpose in a way we can all understand. He says that " the 
trouble with most people in being economical with their 
money is, that when they spend it, they spend it on some- 
thing in particular, but when they save it, they try to save it 
in a kind of general way." You know how this is your- 
self. It would be just as easy and just as much fun to save 
money as to spend it, if you would think of just as definite 



MAKING UP YOUR TIME-TABLE 315 

an object for which to save it. And so it is with our time. 
If we saved it for a particular end we would have plenty of 
it to spend for that particular purpose. 

Mr. Lee goes on wisely : -"A man will do almost any- 
thing to save his life at a particular place and at a particular 
time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is drown- 
ing; but if he has a year to save it in, a year of not taking a 
piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time, and of go- 
ing to bed early, he will die." 

Put down in your schedule, please, just what you are 
saving time for, and see how much you can save for these 
definite purposes each day. You will be richer in time than 
you ever were before in your life. 



XLI 
STUDYING YOURSELF 

IN order to decide upon one's vocation one ought to 
study one's self, study vocations, and study how others 
have come to their decisions. Let us take up these points 
in order. 

Dr. Herman Schneider has discovered that there are cer- 
tain major characteristics of youth so marked that it would 
seem that any one could soon discover into which class 
he should be placed. The following questions are his, with 
some additions from Gowin and Wheatley. 

i. Men range from helpless cripples to physical giants. 
The weaker can do piano-tuning, bookkeeping, telephone in- 
stalling ; the strong can be draymen, stone-masons, baggage- 
handlers. Some men are well, some sickly. Some who are 
well are not vigorous. How do you class ? Have you any 
bodily defects? 

Have you physical strength and vigor both, or physical 
weakness? 

2. Some can do book-work well, others hand-work. 
Some can be designers, inspectors, writers; others can be 
machinists, molders, masons. 

Have you mental or manual ability? 

3. " There is the type of man who wants to get on the 
same car every morning, get off at the same corner, go to 
the same shop, ring up at the same clock, stow his lunch in 
the same locker, go to the same machine, and do the same 

316 




a 03 



STUDYING YOURSELF 317 

class of work day after day. Another type of man would 
go crazy under this routine ; he wants to move about, meet 
new people, see and do new things." 

Are you of the settled or the roving type? 

4. " When a blizzard is raging one type likes to hear the 
roar of the wind because its heightens his sense of protection 
indoors, while the other wants to go out and fight his way 
against the storm." 

Are you of the indoor or outdoor type? 

'5. " Some young men naturally assume responsibility ; 
others just as naturally evade it. The most productive 
workmen often make inefficient foremen, while an inferior 
producer often makes a good foreman." 

Are you directive or dependent? 

6. Is your hand skillful in experiments or do you break 
apparatus? In careful work are your fingers all thumbs? 

Are you accurate or inaccurate? 

7. Do you fix things that are broken or out of order, or 
not ? Do you leave things in pell-mell condition ? 

Are you orderly or disorderly? 

8. How about your habits of study? Are you mentally 
alert, possessed of much curiosity, alive to new and progres- 
sive methods, or is your mind rather content and tending to 
be bored by study? 

Are you studious or non-studious? 

9. Some are original in suggestion; others usually put 
them into effect. 

Are you original or imitative? 

10. " There are two types, one of which likes to fuss with 
an intricate bit of mechanism, while the other wants the task 
of big dimensions." 

Are you of small scope or large scope? 



318 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

11. " Some men can adapt themselves to any environ- 
ment, while the others act the same under almost any cir- 
cumstances. One is a salesman, the other a statistician." 

Are you adaptable or self -centered? 

12. " There is a distinct type which thinks and then does, 
in contrast to which there is the type which does and then 
thinks/' 

Are you deliberate or impulsive? 

13. Do you have a strong music sense? 

14. Do you have a strong color sense? 

15. Do you have manual accuracy or inaccuracy? 

16. Do you have mental accuracy or inaccuracy? 

17. " Some bring all the light they possess to focus on 
the subject under consideration; on the other hand, we find 
men who wander, or flit from one subject to another." 

Do you have mental focus or diffusion? 

18. " Some men go to pieces in an emergency; whereas 
if they were given time they would hold themselves together 
and act wisely. The emergency man must possess rapid 
mental coordination. The latter is necessary for success 
in the baseball player, the motorman, the surgeon. The 
former is usually typical of the philosopher, the jurist, the 
research scientist." 

Have you rapid or slow mental coordination? 

19. Do you test out every project by the question : Does 
it pay, or do you regard skilful work as an end in itself? 

Just how important is money to you ? Dr. Schneider tells 
of a doctor whom he knows who sacrificed $10,000 a year to 
be a research scientist, while at the same time he knows a 
research scientist who gave up a brilliant career to acquire 
$5000 more a year. Which would you do, if the option 
were offered you? 



STUDYING YOURSELF 319 

Are you a materialist or an idealist? 

20. " One often hears it said of a man that he has no 
push, or that he lacks backbone, grit, sand; other men are 
said to possess these qualities." The first stands still; the 
second causes to move. The noisy man does not always 
cause to move; the quiet man often does. 

Do you stand still or make things move? 

NOW BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF 

The one essential in trying to answer these questions is 
candor. It is so easy to flatter one's self, to mark as one's 
own what are simply the qualities one would like to have. 

For instance, if you are not candid, you may at once write 
down in answer to the last question that you do cause things 
to move, but what did you ever make go, and do you do it 
regularly, or even often? You like to think, in answer to 
the fifth question, that you naturally assume responsibility, 
but what responsibilities are you carrying at this present 
moment? If you are carrying none, then why not put your- 
self down honestly as dependent rather than directive, for 
you will have to remain a workman until you prove that 
you can direct as a foreman. 

Gowin and Wheatley suggest that one should get this 
information on paper by a self-analysis chart. You can 
easily construct one, from the questions above, as follows: 

Grade: Little Medium Great 

Strength x 

Vigor x 

Kind of Work 

Manual or Mental x 

Location 

Outdoor or Indoor x 



320 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

etc., etc. Underline on the left the alternative you possess 
and in one of the three blank colunms check your own grade 
for each. 

Then they suggest that you make another chart just 
like this one, on which you mark the qualities demanded by 
the particular vocation in which you are interested. Think 
of some particular men who are doing this work, and what 
kind of men they are. This is a vocation-qualities chart. 
Do not try to be too accurate or complete; just fill out what 
you are sure of. 

" When you finally come to compare the two analysis 
cards, do they fit together like a dove-tailed joint, or are 
they opposed like two sword-blades? Frankly, after look- 
ing them over and comparing them point by point, what 
do you think is the prospect of making a highly successful 
career out of the combination?" 

Remember always that, at your age, you have a good 
chance to make yourself over, slowly, gradually. The vo- 
cation cannot be made over. 

SOME QUESTIONS THAT STRIKE HOME 

It is possible to go a little deeper into self-study than 
this, if one is willing. Some years ago Professor Frank 
Parsons established in Boston the first Vocation Bureau. 
Dr. Parsons usually liked to begin with a group of boys, 
to whom he would give a talk, showing that to them their 
own lives were worth a million dollars, and that in the in- 
vesting of those lives they ought to take care to choose 
callings that should give the best returns for their abilities 
and enthusiasms. He would describe how carefully men 
like Lincoln tried out several callings, all the time studying 



STUDYING YOURSELF 321 

to find out what was his strongest side. Then Dr. Parsons 
would describe the work of his Vocation Bureau, giving 
actual examples of boys who had come to him, stating their 
puzzles, and then relating how he had helped to solve them. 
As the result of such a talk, Dr. Parsons would often make 
enough personal appointments with boys to keep him busy 
for two weeks. 

When a boy came to see him he would question him first 
about his physical and family history, having the boy write 
the answers, or writing them himself, in a notebook. He 
would find out his age, height, weight and health record, 
whether he could walk, lift and endure well, what heredi- 
tary diseases had been in his family, and what were the 
occupations of his older relatives. Next he would ques- 
tion him about his education, reading, etc., asking not only 
what topics he had read and studied, but also such pertment 
questions as: 

Tell me how you spent each evening of last week. 

If you went to a World's Fair, what would you go to see 
first? 

Then he would ask him about his business experience and 
success. By this time the questioner would have decided 
whether the boy fell into one of two classes: first, those 
having well-developed aptitudes and interests, or, second, 
those who had not. If the boy were of the first class, he 
would be asked some such questions as these : 

If all the boys in Boston were gathered into one room and 
a naturalist were to classify them as he would classify plants 
and animals, in which division would you belong? 

In what respects would you excel most of them, and in 
what would you be inferior to most? 



322 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Would the scientist put you in the mechanical group or 
the professional group, the executive group or the laboring 
group ? 

Such questions would focus many a boy's attention on 
his strongest points, and he would be helped at once to 
place himself in the class where he belongs. 

But if this did not work, then after some physical and 
mental tests Professor Parsons would set before the boy, 
for report at a later interview, two elaborate question-sheets 
to be filled out with full answers. It is these searching and 
ingenious questions to which I want especially to call your 
attention. It might be thought that a boy could hide him- 
self behind a question-sheet, but these inquiries have so 
much ginger and mean so much that nobody could an- 
swer them honestly without making some self -discoveries. 
Here are a few of those which are calculated to find out 
what a boy is interested in: 

What do you look for first in the newspapers? 

If you had Aladdin's lamp and could have every wish 
fulfilled, what would be your first half-dozen wishes? 

What would you do and buy next week if you had a mil- 
lion dollars left you? 

Then, on the second sheet, are questions to bring out the 
boy's personal habits and ideals : 

Are your collars and cuffs Caucasian? 

Do you shake hands like a steam-engine, or a stick, or an 
icicle, or like a cordial friend? 

Do you smile easily and naturally, and feel the smile in 
your heart? 

Do you do most of the talking, or do you draw out your 
companions and listen to them? 

What sort of things make you angry most quickly? 



STUDYING YOURSELF 323 

Are you planning to form future friendships? With 
what sort of people? By what means? For what ends? 

Do you show your good will and affection, or are you 
keeping them bottled up for future use after the funerals 
of your friends? 

Would you like to have a strong novelist describe you 
just as you are? 

Are you the kind of a man you would like your sister to 
associate with, become intimate with, and marry? 

Are you the kind of man you'd like to see the world full 
of? 

By the time a boy has been through a series of inquiries 
like these I should think he would be ashamed to meet him- 
self by daylight, but he certainly would know where he was 
" at " as he never did before. 

As the result of the opening of this Vocation Bureau, 
with headquarters in several centers in Boston, hundreds, 
not of boys only, but of college graduates and middle-aged 
men, sought counsel, and have gone away grateful. The 
bureau prevented carpenters from trying to be poets, and 
professors from being content to lay brick, and started 
many lads into enthusiastic preparation for larger careers 
than, otherwise, they would have had wisdom or courage 
to attempt. 

Understand, please, that it does no good just to read over 
these questions and answer them to yourself. One needs 
to brood over them and write down the answers in a plain 
hand and with thorough honesty, if he is to find out any- 
thing. 



XLII 

STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 

J^O you know anything about the various occupations? 
•■■^ A boy asked me the other day if there was any dif- 
ference between an electrician and an electrical engineer. 
I am sure you know better than that. One fixes door-bells 
and the other designs and installs electrical machinery, tele- 
phone and telegraph lines, and has to do with electric cars, 
electric lighting and the electrifying of steam railroads. 
One is a mechanic, the other practises one of the most dif- 
ficult and important technical professions. 

Before you go into any occupation there are certain ques- 
tions that you ought to ask and answer concerning it. 
Here are some of them : 

i. Is this an industry that is growing or passing out? 

2. Is it overcrowded, or is there a scarcity of workers, 
particularly of high-grade workers? 

3. Is the occupation ' stable or is it tending to frequent 
change? How many years is the average active career in 
this vocation? 

4. How many hours a day are required, and is there 
much overtime work? 

5. Is the payment by time or piece-work? 

6. What are qualities for success in this occupation? 
Are they high or low, few or varied, common or uncom- 
mon? 

7. Are the conditions under which the work is done 
healthy or unhealthy? This includes questions as to out- 
doors or indoors, ventilation, heat and light, exposure and 

324 



STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 325 

sudden change, pure air or air laden with dust, dirt or 
poison, eye-strain and nerve-strain. 

8. Is the work dangerous? Does it require special life- 
insurance rates? 

9. Is the occupation stimulating to growth or deadening? 
Is it monotonous or interesting? 

10. How does one enter this occupation? In what 
ways, by how long preparation, at what expense, under 
what method of application? Are untrained beginners de- 
sired? At what age should entrance begin? 

11. What about wages at entrance, and labor? What 
salary could persons of average success expect in their 
prime ? 

12. What per cent, of the workers remain at the bottom 
for a long time ? What per cent, advance rapidly ? What 
is the highest position possible? Does added effort con- 
tinue to bring added reward ? 

13. Can all beginners learn more than one operation? 
Are there opportunities later to change from one depart- 
ment to another? Is there an apprenticeship system? 
Does the worker receive any instruction from his employer 
or superintendent? 

14. What trade-union restrictions are there, if any, as to 
apprenticeship or advancement? 

15. Does the work require chiefly strength or brains? 
What natural qualifications are required? 

Every man, in order to live, has to sell himself, that is, 
to sell some portion of himself in exchange for life. Which 
will you choose to do, sell your body, or sell your attention? 
If you sell your body, you get nothing back but day's 
wages; when you sell your attention, you get your atten- 
tion back, and better wages to boot. 



326 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

1 6. What, specifically, is a day's work like in this voca- 
tion? 

Too often we get the glamor of a particular occupation 
by seeing it only in a large, indefinite way. Take a candy- 
store in a city, for instance. One thinks of the beautifully 
decorated room, the dainty clerks, the opportunity to eat 
all the sweets one wants, the nicely dressed customers, but, 
as McKeever reminds us : " Probably the girl must stand 
in one place ten or twelve hours every day and make her 
fingers fly as fast as lightning. In the mechanical act of 
wrapping and placing in position one particular kind of 
candy all day long there is no change, no variation, no let- 
up. A standard record of work must be met even though 
every fiber of the body is constantly strained in the effort. 
The monotony alone dulls the intellect, blunts the sensi- 
bilities, and brings despair into the soul. The body droops, 
the physique becomes wan, and many incipient forms of 
disease are invited." 

17. Where should I especially like to live? Could I 
do so and follow this calling? Could I live contentedly 
where I might have to if I chose this calling? 

18. What is the social standing of those who follow this 
vocation? Would it satisfy me? Is this vocation held in 
high esteem ? Would it help or hinder the social position 
I desire? 

19. What pleasures are within the reach of those who 
follow this vocation? Would they be satisfying to me? 

20. Is this occupation one that is usually conducted hon- 
estly with success? 

21. Is it one that contributes to the common good? 

22. What personal satisfactions would I expect to find in 
it? 



STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 327 

23. Would this be a calling through which I could ex- 
press myself largely, or would I have to find my self-expres- 
sion outside my work? 

24. What do I know of others who have followed this 
calling: their success, their character, their satisfaction? 

25. What is there in my own abilities that leads me to 
consider this calling favorably? What, unfavorably? 

26. How do my tastes point in the matter? 

2j. How about my preparation, actual or possible? 

28. If I chose this calling, what regrets might I have? 
What other vocation might I wish I had considered? 

These tests are particularly needed in the new occupa- 
tions, that appeal just because they are new. There is a 
glamor about being a motion-picture actor, but while the 
profession probably is a permanent one, does it meet the 
tests numbered 2, 3, 10? On the other hand, how much 
greater is the social value and the personal opportunity of 
such professions as analytical chemistry, landscape garden- 
ing or architecture, to which even girls are turning them- 
selves to-day. 

SOME NEW TESTS OF ADAPTABILITY FOR 
OCCUPATIONS 

A number of tests have been worked out which are of 
some service in discovering the adaptability of individuals 
to particular occupations, most of them however being of 
more value in telling one what not to do than what to try. 

The first instance is the work of Mr. S. E. Thompson, 
who used reaction-time tests in selecting girls for the work 
of inspecting for flaws the steel balls used in ball-bearings. 
This work requires quick and keen perception accompanied 
by quick responsive action. Mr. Thompson measured the 



328 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

reaction time of all the girls and eliminated those who 
showed a long time between stimulus and reaction. The 
final outcome was that 35 girls did the work formerly done 
by 120; the accuracy of the work was increased by 66 per 
cent; the wages of the girls were doubled; the working-day 
decreased from 103^2 hours to 8^ hours ; and the profit of 
the factory was increased. 

The second of the three cases is the work of Miinster- 
berg, of Harvard, in testing street-car motormen with the 
object of selecting those least liable to be responsible for 
accidents. From several viewpoints this problem is of 
great practical importance, inasmuch as some electric rail- 
road companies have as many as 50,000 accident-indemnity 
cases a year, which involve an expense amounting in some 
cases to 13 per cent of the annual gross earnings. 

The motormen were examined by means of a somewhat 
complicated laboratory apparatus constructed for the pur- 
pose of testing their powers of sustained attention and cor- 
rect discrimination with respect to a rapidly changing pano- 
rama of objects, some moving at different rates of speed 
parallel to the line of vision of the subject, and others cross- 
ing it from right and left. 

The results of the experiments showed that the tests were 
fairly accurate in sorting the motormen for efficiency as 
demonstrated by actual service. The tests require about 10 
minutes for each individual. Even in their still unper- 
fected form their application would result in the rejection 
of about 25 per cent of those who now are employed as 
motormen. There can be little doubt that this would re- 
sult in a large reduction in the number of deaths and in- 
juries from street-car accidents. 

" The present situation," says Dr. Leonard P. Ayres, 



STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 



3 2 9 



from whom we have cited the instances above, " is that we 
already have some tests for selecting people for positions 
and no tests for selecting positions for people. The reason 
is not far to seek; in one case the problem is vastly more 
simple than in the other. When we select people for a 
position, our problem is to sort out the more fit from among 
the applicants. This involves the development of methods 
for discovering the degree to which each candidate pos- 
sesses the needed qualifications for one kind of work. 

" When the object is to select a position for a person, 
the problem is to discover which one of a vast number of 
possible sorts of work the person is best qualified to do. 
The difficulty arises from the almost unlimited number of 
possible alternatives. 

" Now the total number of separate classes of gainful 
occupations listed in the occupational index of the United 
States Census is 9,326, and many of them should be split 
into several subdivisions. This reveals something of the 
magnitude of the task of sorting children according to their 
vocational destinations. 

" Nor is the mere number of our occupations the only 
difficult feature to be faced. Modern industry is subdivided 
into occupations of which teachers and psychologists have, 
as a rule, slight knowledge. For example, if we open the 
occupational index to ' S ' we find a list like the follow- 
ing: 



shooter 


skimmer 


sleever 


smelter 


shoveler 


skinner 


slider 


smith er 


silker 


skiver 


slipper 


smoker 


singer 


slasher 


slitter 


smoother 


sizer 


slater 


slubber 


snapper 


skeiner 


slaughterer 


slugger 


soldier 


skidder 









330 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Some of the same tests would no doubt be useful for 
quite a range of occupations, such as these just named, but 
it seems a hopeless task to get tests accurate enough and 
far-reaching enough to be of much service to the average 
youth who may be considering several very different voca- 
tions at the same time. 

HOW TO STUDY VOCATIONS IN SCHOOL 

A few of our high schools are trying in a practical way 
to help their students in their life decisions. In De Kalb, 
Ills., for example, a teacher meets a class of 40 to 50 once 
a week for a year or more and talks to them definitely upon 
industrial conditions. This teacher gives an account of his 
work, outlining the substance of his first talks : 

" You can find out something in regard to your ability 
by your success in school in the various courses. About 
other conditions you probably have little knowledge. You 
will find, for instance, that some occupations are tremen- 
dously overcrowded. Other occupations have disadvantages 
as to working conditions or working hours. These are 
facts that you ought to know before you choose an accupa- 
tion. We can not talk to you about all the great occupa- 
tions to be found in the business world, but we can classify 
the occupations into great groups, and by considering the 
qualifications required in these great groups you will be 
helped somewhat to make a decision on the choice of an 
occupation." 

After dividing up the occupations into groups, such as the 
manufacturing group, the mechanical group, the profes- 
sional group, etc., he suggests certain tests by which a boy 
may tell whether he has ability in this line. For instance, 
in the mechanical trades, mechanical skill is a fundamental 



STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 331 

requisite. A boy must have the necessary skill to handle 
materials deftly. Next, he must have a liking for ma- 
chines and power. He must have some inventiveness in 
making things. He should have some skill in mechanical 
drawing and be willing to learn the trade which lies at the 
basis of the industry into which he is going. He should 
not be afraid of hard and dirty work. He should be will- 
ing to put on overalls and get his hands dirty if necessary. 
Finally, he should try, if possible, to get the technical- 
school training, which is the basis of his trade. 

Now, says he, if you think your ability lies in the direc- 
tion of mechanical trades, take the work in the manual- 
training shop and try out some of the courses which are 
offered in woodwork, metal work, printing, gas-engine 
work. If you find that your interest is aroused and sus- 
tained, that you have skill to do good work in the school 
shop, you have some indication of your ability. You may 
further use your summer vacations to good purpose by 
getting a place in some of our shops and finding out 
whether you really like the work which is carried on in 
them. 

" We try to show that the basis for success in engineering 
lies in mathematical and mechanical skill. Prospective stu- 
dents of engineering are asked to look over such a book as 
McCullough's Engineering as a Vocation. 

" Just this year a couple of boys who were thinking of 
engineering came to me and asked for information along 
that line. Tasked them to take this book and read it in the 
light of the discussions we had had. They both came to 
me a little later and said : ' We have come to the con- 
clusion that we would not care for engineering as a voca- 
tion. We had no idea that it involved taking higher mathe- 



332 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

matics, physics, and things like that/ This is a practical 
illustration of the guidance work. 

" We now come to the second part of our work in guid- 
ance, which the program calls personal characteristics, but 
which I like to think of more as applied ethics. In this part 
of the work it is impressed on the students that certain 
qualifications are needed in whatever line they may enter, 
because they are fundamental to success. These things are 
attractive personality, practical efficiency, upright charac- 
ter, loyalty. I call their attention to a card which says: 
1 The face you wear at 60 depends upon what you do to- 
day.' Now, what is the reason for this statement? The 
reason is that youth is the plastic period. This is the period 
in which we acquire and absorb. It is the period of edu- 
cation. We can make ourselves now very nearly what we 
desire. A little later our habits will be fixed and we shall 
find it difficult to change them. It is worth while, then, to 
have some ideals of personal qualifications and to endeavor 
to make ourselves like our ideals. 

" Personality is treated as involving voice, dress, man- 
ner, courtesy, tact. In talking to students about courtesy 
we use this little card, which reads : ' Politeness is like an 
air-cushion; there may be nothing in it, but it eases the jolts 
wonderfully.' 

" When you apply for a position, how do you act when 
you enter the office? If there is but one seat left and sev- 
eral people are waiting, do you take the empty seat, without 
considering the others? When leaving the office, do you 
allow your employer to go first, or do you step ahead of 
him? On the other hand, suppose some of you go to col- 
lege instead of into business. You think perhaps your 
manners will not be observed. Here is what the college 



STUDYING THE VOCATIONS 333 

editor wrote about the freshmen whom he noticed on the 
campus : ' They do not know better than to walk around 
with toothpicks in their mouths ; they do not know enough 
to tip their hats to a lady; and they gurgle when they eat 
their soup/ You see, you are being judged in this matter, 
whether you are in college or whether you are at work.'' 

STILL, THE ACTUAL DECISION IS YOUR OWN 

But, after all this careful advice is said and done, note 
this remark: 

" It will be noticed that we do not decide for the indi- 
vidual. We throw the burden back upon the student. Our 
purpose is to furnish the individual with the material for a 
more intelligent decision, not to make the decision for 
him." 

So, in the end, you will have to decide for yourself. 
Your powers are still too undeveloped for any one to run 
the danger of limiting you by too definite suggestion. What 
you need is to take all you can learn about these several vo- 
cations and the preparations necessary for them, all that 
may be said to you about the required personal qualities, 
and then go on to a candid, unflinching study of yourself 
and your opportunities, determined only to make at length 
the largest choice that your powers and your courage can 
undertake. 

True, the good places are crowded, but every good place 
in this world becomes vacant once in twenty years. 

Suggested Books to Read on Vocations 

" Occupations," by Gowin and Wheatley, published by Ginn and 
Co., Boston. The first book that is intended to be read and 
studied by boys and girls themselves, on the attractions and 
requirements of the different classes of vocations. 



334 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Salaried Positions for Men in Social Work," published by the 
Association Press, N. Y. A fifteen-cent booklet outlining 
twenty-one lines of social work and telling of the oppor- 
tunities for advancement and larger service. 

" Profitable Vocations for Boys," and " Profitable Vocations for 
Girls," by E. W. Weaver, published by A. S. Barnes and Co., 
New York. 



XLIII 
DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 

SOME foolish young people and a few foolish older 
people decry the higher education. They point to the 
superb successes of " self-made " men. In one sense there 
are no self-made men. A so-called self-made man is a man 
who deliberately chooses his means of preparation outside 
the walls of school, but he prepares just the same, and his 
first years of preparation are his schooling. This school- 
ing is just as arduous and, because of its indirectness and 
waste, often more prolonged than that of the college or the 
technical school. Abraham Lincoln is often cited as a man 
who got along without preparation. No remark could be 
more foolish. Lincoln's misfortune was that he was dis- 
tant from the tools of learning, but his chief characteristic 
was that he used the best tools he could find, and the young 
rail-splitter who could confound most college students to- 
day by his intimate knowledge of Shakespeare, Euclid, and 
the Bible, would, if he were living as a youth to-day, be 
found within the walls of a good college. 

Dr. Henry van Dyke has stated that there are three 
theories by which the purposes of a higher education may 
be defined. 

COLLEGE MAKES THE APPRECIATIVE MAN 

The first is the decorative theory. This implies that a 
young man or woman goes to college in order to belong to a 

335 



336 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

gentler caste. It suggests that a college is what some young 
ladies' seminaries used to be called, " a finishing-school." 
Now this ideal is not entirely unworthy. It suggests that 
we must be educated in order to be able to appreciate, or, 
as President G. Stanley Hall has it, " to delight in what 
we should." This function of education is too much neg- 
lected to-day. In Mr. Owen Johnson's story, " Stover at 
Yale," the hero attacks his classmates one day for going 
through that great and well-equipped university in such 
ignorance. He demands that one of them shall tell him the 
name of a single painting of Millet's except " The An- 
gelus," or that they shall give him any conception at all of 
the schools of modern art. He asks them who wrote the 
opera " Carmen," and defies them to name any song from 
it except st The Toreador." He challenges them in the fields 
of history, of social enthusiasm, and of religious method. 
He arraigns them, not only because they are lazy, but be- 
cause they are childishly ignorant. Too many graduates of 
technical schools to-day are entirely blind to the gentler 
side of life, and do not know as much about art, literature, 
or music as their wives, whose only access to culture has 
been through the woman's club. The college graduate 
whose loftiest reading is The Saturday Evening Post, whose 
admiration in fiction is " The Rosary," and whose satis- 
faction in music is Harry Lauder on the phonograph has 
surely lost at least one segment of his opportunity. 

Some day you will travel. You will wish to get a good 
look at this world you live in before you die. Will you 
be like the young American brother and sister who went 
to Florence and climbed one of those slender church-towers 
that overlook the city. The silvery town lay outspread be- 
fore them, with its high houses, its fantastic turrets, its 




o 



DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 337 

great blind blocks of medieval palaces, suggesting so much 
life and history, so much strife and sorrow, but all need- 
ing interpreting to them. " How much we should enjoy 
all this," sighed the sister, " if we were not so ignorant." 

There is still, we may hope, in America, much of the 
spirit which Dr. Henry van Dyke describes, of the two 
young persons who came to him contemplating marriage, 
and asked his advice as to the occupation the husband should 
take up. One of the two fields under inspection, as the 
doctor showed, would involve a good income and eventu- 
ally a fortune; the other, in teaching, would mean always a 
modest income, comparative poverty, but the chance of 
great influence and of a life of culture and service. The 
young people unhesitatingly chose the latter. Surely 
America's greatest men are not those who make the most 
money, but those who are too busy to make money. Edu- 
cation does have its money value, but the effectiveness of 
college is not limited, as is the effectiveness of a commercial 
training, to the income it can provide. Education, so one 
of the brightest men of our time tells us, is just the attempt 
by our teachers to prevent our going by our destination, in 
the night, while we have the ticket for the great festival in 
our sleeping hands. 

COLLEGE HAS MARKET VALUE 

Another theory of higher education is that of market 
value. In other words, one is to go to college so as to 
make more money. This too is not an ignoble purpose. It 
is rather a very worthy thing to wish so to increase one's 
value to the world that the world shall make payment in 
its natural and often just rewards. The world is } asking, 
" What can you do?" and while a few geniuses perform 



338 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

a work which money cannot buy, most of us would do well 
to develop during our education abilities which it would be 
honest and fair to ask pay for. A practical education is 
one that can be made effective. Some one has said that the 
only trouble with educating gentlemen is that somebody else 
has to support them. This is an argument for insisting 
that every youth should, as part of his curriculum, earn 
some of his way through college. One is not likely to cheat 
himself in what he pays for himself. Figures as to the 
money value of training are given in the next chapter. 

Some say the college is ineffective. One has spoken of a 
university as " full of the skeletons of the past and the 
wings of the future," as if there were a good deal of lumber 
about a college course. Some business men, usually those 
who have not been to college themselves, insist that college 
graduates are not so well adapted to success in business as 
those who have been trained in the shop or the store. 
Here authorities differ. Mr. R. T. Crane, who led off once 
in a bitter attack against all kinds of education above the 
grammar school, claimed that men in big business would 
generally say that they preferred college men while prac- 
tically they did not call for them and usually discriminated 
against them. He said that college graduates were filled 
with foolish and useless ideas ; were too conceited to learn ; 
and were often corrupted by college vices. 

On the other hand, Chancellor Jordan says that busi- 
ness men prefer the man who knows things from the top 
downward to the one who knows them from the bottom up- 
ward, that college men are more intelligent and full of 
initiative and adaptability; and that "to have worked out 
one serious problem by solid methods in college is worth 
more than ten years of floor- walking." 



DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 339 

Usually the untrained man does not know how little he 
knows. An ignoramus once took to Huxley a pamphlet 
that he had written attacking the theory of evolution. As 
the great scientist did not seem to be much impressed with 
it, he asked him what he would advise his doing to know 
the subject better. Said the thorough man of science 
gruffly, " Take a cockroach and dissect it ! " 

The figures seem to show that the college man has, on 
the average, a tremendous advantage over the uneducated 
man. The biographies in " Who's Who in America " 
show that one hundred times as many college men as non- 
college men rise to prominence in this country. While it 
is possible for a brainless or a lazy man to come up en- 
tirely dry after being immersed in a college course, it is 
hard to find a college graduate, one decently self -controlled 
and industrious, who is not making a good living. The 
trouble with Mr. Crane's arraignment is that it shows the 
narrowness and unfairness which is characteristic of the 
uncultivated man. He sees no success except commercial 
success. 

COLLEGE GIVES THE STUDENT MOTIVE POWER 

But this is not all. To be friends with the mighty past 
and to become a larger man than at present is well. No- 
body is poor who is good company to himself. To have 
a schooled, workable mind that can do an appreciable part 
of the world's work is good. But this other theory of edu- 
cation is the creative theory. Education is not only to help 
us to appreciate and to help us to do, but it is to help us to 
generate motive power of our own. " The Country Con- 
tributor " was sensible when she remarked that " The 
higher education is a finish, but the highest education is a 



340 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

start." Now, life is caught not from books, but from life. 
The power of impulse that a college gives is in the person 
of its great teachers. The chief test of a college is not its 
laboratories, but its men. Every student in a college should 
elect some study under its greatest teacher, no matter what 
he happens to be teaching. To come into contact, in col- 
lege or in business, with a strong, rounded, forceful good 
man is the largest part of a liberal education. 

One who does this has that which Walter Hinchman says 
is better than the old Greek ideal of " a sound mind in a 
sound body," namely, " a growing mind in a sound body." 
This reminds me of an illustration that I saw some time 
ago in a periodical published at Dartmouth College. Two 
young men were about to erect office buildings in their na- 
tive town. One, deciding that the town required such a 
building about eight stories in height, dug his foundation 
accordingly and built an eight-story building. The other, 
foreseeing a greater future for the town, went deep and 
dug forty feet below the surface and laid a massive founda- 
tion, to the ridicule of the other. He also built eight 
stories. The town did grow, and the first went to his 
architect, and said that he wished to enlarge his building. 
But the architect told him it was not safe to do so, since 
his foundation was intended only for the building he had 
erected. The second went to his architect and said the 
same. " All right. Go on. Go as far as you like. Your 
foundation will stand twenty stories if you want." He had 
laid the basis for the big future when it became the pres- 
ent. 

When you choose your course of higher study you do 
what the soldier does who, after he has put on his uni- 
form, takes his sword. He adds four feet of steel to the 



DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 341 

length of his arm. How important it is that you choose 
just the right sword for your arm. 

" All men go freely out and in, 
And choose their arms to fight and win; 
But one man goes with silly hands, 
And helpless, halting, choosing stands, 
And from the glittering, deadly steels, 
Fits him with clumsy sword, and deals 
A feeble, witless, useless blow, 
Which helps no friend and hurts no foe. 

Close by his sicie his brother makes 

Swift choice, unerringly, and takes 

From those same chambers hilt and blade 

With which more magic sword is made 

Than that far-famed which armed the hand 

Of Lion-Heart in Eastern land. 

. . . Weapons stout and old and good 

For each man's utmost hardihood 

Lie ready, countless, priceless, free, 

Within the magic armory." 

BUT THERE ARE OTHER DIFFICULTIES 

Certain objections to college life ought to be considered. 
One indictment against the college is college vices. Mr. 
Crane claimed that from twenty to forty per cent of col- 
lege young men were addicted to the two college vices — 
drunkenness and immorality. He brought some evidence, 
especially from Harvard University, to prove that he was 
right. One must not deny that vices are found among 
college youth. But are they not found elsewhere? Will 
any one deny that an even larger proportion of young men 
in business are subject to these two vices named? Is the 
atmosphere of a city boarding-house cleaner than that of a 



342 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

college dormitory? Is the saloon or the baseball park or 
the amusement park, where business men gather, a nobler 
environment than the college commons? In which are 
found the greater incentives to sobriety and purity, the 
nobler examples, the finer public spirit? Is not a college 
on the whole as safe a place as anywhere that a young man 
can spend the four years from eighteen to twenty-two? 
Are these vices characteristic of colleges or of young men? 
Some young men will make missteps wherever they are 
placed. It is because men in college are gathered into a 
community and thus are easy of inspection, as men in busi- 
ness and other walks of life are not, that they are so open to 
criticism. On the whole, the best place, next to the home, 
to make missteps is in college, where they count less on 
one's record and future than they do in business. It is 
not necessary to go to a college where vice is notorious, 
where the sons of rich men gather as to a sort of winter 
watering-place, or where no attention is paid by the faculty 
to the personal lives of the students. No one who knows 
denies that the colleges are better places than they used to 
be ; that drinking parties are fewer ; that vice is less popular. 
Athletics and the training that goes with it are a protection 
to the very youths who most need such protection. In 
many college fraternities there is definite safeguarding of 
weaker brothers. In some colleges the public spirit is dis- 
tinctly in favor of manly, pure living. Nobody needs to 
lose a college education because he cannot find a college 
where he is morally safe, if he wants to be safe. 

One more indictment against college is that it is a place 
for loafing. There is much truth in this. Probably there 
are no places on earth where there is more brilliant and aim- 
less talk than in a college dormitory or fraternity house. 



DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 343 

The association there means much for mutual education 
in contact with different outlooks and different personali- 
ties. But it discourages hard work. Sunday is nowhere 
quite so profitless as in a modern large college. In this 
lies, perhaps, the greatest vice of college life, and women's 
colleges are as great sinners in this regard as those of 
men. When the college man fails in after-life, it is largely 
because he has lost the sense of value of an hour, cannot 
fix his mind on a serious problem, or wants to chat in time 
that belongs to somebody else. Life outside college has 
many fiercer and more serious temptations than this, and 
the reply to the criticism is that, since there is no place in 
life without its peril, the collegian must recognize this as 
his peril and guard himself against it. 

What has been said about college defects suggests that 
there are no doubt some young men and women who are 
not strong enough to rise above them. We come then to 
the question, Who should go to college? 

WHO SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE? 

Just because a boy or girl has graduated from high school 
and fulfils the college requirements and has a good-na- 
tured willingness to go on or an eager desire to share the 
social or athletic life of a college is not an adequate reason 
for sending such a youth to college. I am a believer in 
what Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee has called " the top-shelf 
theory of education." I believe that only those things that 
are reached up to with desire and effort are prized or made 
good use of. 

I may put my answer to the question abruptly: Only 
those should go to college who earn their way through. I 
do not mean by this that every college student should liter- 



344 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

ally earn money enough to support him through the getting 
of his education, though I do think this is a good thing for 
most. There are three ways of earning a higher educa- 
tion, says President Le Baron R. Briggs — by money, by 
enthusiasm, and by strenuosity. A boy who has such a 
mark set before him at fourteen ought to be able and willing 
to earn half money enough by the time he enters college to 
take him through his first year, and this, with health and 
industry, will assure an entire college course to anybody. 
This is a good test for the boy whose only conscious aim in 
going to college is to play football, or to postpone hard 
work. A higher education costs, including the interest on 
money that might be earned during the time in commerce, 
about ten thousand dollars, and both a parent and a son 
or daughter wants to realize this before embarking on a 
purposeless but expensive course of training. Even a girl 
can do something by her works to show her faith in the 
education that she wants. 

Another test is enthusiasm. One who realizes the value 
of college will get the best out of college. As soon as it is 
evident that a boy or girl has started to build a temple and 
not a wood-shed out of his life it will pay to educate him. 
Such an one will not put first things last. The man who 
has found his place can afford to play football. 

Strenuosity is a test where enthusiasm is wanting. If 
one is a plodder it will pay to see what further can be made 
out of him. We know at least that he is not an inverte- 
brate. He will probably do good work, and he may awaken 
to do brilliant work. 

So if a boy or girl is willing to earn his education by 
money or enthusiasm or strenuosity, any one or two of 
them, he ought to go to college. 



DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION PAY? 345 

To the boy or girl who has energy and purpose, the higher 
education beckons, and to such, who have good health and 
are unfettered by obligations to others, such training is 
accessible. 



XLIV 
THE VALUE OF TRAINING 

THE way a college graduate's income leaps up is seen by 
the following table. It shows that the income from 
earnings nearly triples within five years after leaving col- 
lege. It becomes fivefold within ten years. 

Yale average Princeton average 

ist year out $740.14 $706.44 

2nd " " 968.80 902.39 

3rd " " 1286.91 1198.94 

4th " " 1522.98 1651.15 

5th " " 1885.31 2039.42 

6th " " 2408.30 

7th " " 2582.33' 

8th " " 2709.37 

9th " " 3221.89 

10th " " 3803.58 

I know of no figures that are explicit further. In the 
class of '99 at Dartmouth the average income fifteen years 
out of college showed a gain of over 75 per cent, in the last 
five years. 

The figures gathered at Princeton regarding the differ- 
ent vocations are somewhat surprising. The following are 
the average incomes through earnings the first, the fifth and 
the tenth year out of college. 

346 



THE VALUE OF TRAINING 347 

Business Teaching 

1st $ 705.54 1st $ 784.72 

5th 2403.77 5th 1215.35 

10th 4684.69 10th 1779.16 
Ministry Law 

3rd $ 520. 1st $ 355.20 

5th 1187.33 5th 2094.61 

10th 1714.25 10th 4994.88 
Medicine Engineering 

2nd $ 1106.25 1st $ 648.88 

5th 1366.22 5th 1878.18 

10th 3094.45 10th 3002. 

It is a little unexpected to find, from these figures, that 
law, the most crowded profession, should have proven to 
be the most lucrative of all, and that engineering, which is 
so popular and which has been supposed to be so reward- 
ing, is less profitable than medicine. 

A study made some years ago showed that a laborer with 
only primitive training, working under a boss, earns $10.20 
a week, his wage-line remaining horizontal during his 
period of usefulness. The apprentice or shop-trained boy, 
beginning at $3 a week at sixteen, reaches a maximum of 
$15.80 at twenty- four, which he maintains but does not ex- 
ceed during his working years. The trade-school group, 
beginning at sixteen at $2.50, has caught up within three 
years with the apprentice, passes him and continues to a 
maximum of $42. Those who receive higher technical 
training cross the line of the apprentices within six months 
and of the trade-school men within three years, after which 
their curve of progress swings upward as long as they live, 
for as this investigator said : " A ' practical ' man per- 
forms his work within the radius of his arm, a technical 
man within the radius of his brain." 



348 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

The laborer begins at $10 a week, the apprentice at $3, 
the trade-school and the technical graduates at nothing, 
but these last can afford to work for nothing for a few 
weeks or months in order to get the brief experience that 
makes effective their large technical knowledge. Those 
who begins on wages but with no technical knowledge can 
never climb, no matter how ambitious they may be; the 
others cannot be held down unless by deliberately throwing 
away their mental capital. 

Professor McKeever cites an actual case of a man who 
worked the first six months in a large banking-house with- 
out a cent of salary, and was then slowly promoted to the 
position of first assistant cashier with a salary of $2400 a 
year. It took ten years to make the climb, but the promise 
of permanent reward made the early sacrifice worth while. 

Of course money-making is not the highest test of char- 
acter, but whether one prepares to do work that it is fair 
to pay money for is a very good test. "If an American 
has only character enough to make a wage-earner," says 
Dean Arthur Holmes, " according to the Census Bureau, he 
earns $518 a year. If his character is strong enough to 
make him a salaried man, he earns $1187, more than twice 
as much. The average man works thirty years. The 
wage-earner is worth to himself $15,540 for a lifetime, the 
salaried man, $33,610. Character counts." 

WHAT A DAY IN HIGH SCHOOL IS WORTH 

The average income through life of a man who has 
stopped at the eighth grade is about $800 a year. The 
average income of a graduate of the Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology, according to Professor Edward F. 
Miller, is something over $5000 at the end of ten years 




The Trade-School Apprentice Has a Better Chance than the 
Jack-at-All Trades. 



THE VALUE OF TRAINING 349 

out of college. The latter has had, let us say, nine more 
years of schooling than the other; four in high school and 
five in the Institute. He is earning $4200 a year more than 
the other. If each is now 35 years old and has 30 more 
years to work, then the education of the second has been 
worth to him $126,000 more than the lack of schooling of 
the other. Counting 140 days to a school year, the second 
has had 1260 days of additional schooling. Each day spent 
at school in a course of thorough technical training has there- 
fore been worth to him $100 ! Since his income will not re- 
main at the $5000 mark, it seems fair to say that every day 
at school has been worth to him twice $100. 

You didn't realize did you, the day you " cut " and went 
to the circus, that the circus cost you not only 50 cents, but 
a hundred dollars beside? 

TRAINING HAS HIGHER VALUES THAN MONEY 

" Only one per cent, of our population finish high school 
and go on to college ; yet from this one per cent, come about 
forty per cent, of the leaders in our national life." 

E. W. Weaver carefully studied the handbook known as 
" Who's Who in America," which contains the names of the 
16,000 Americans who have attained prominence enough 
to secure a place therein. He says that the book names no 
one without education; "that the list include 1,368 names 
of persons who had only a common school education, 1,627 
from the high school class and 7,709 from those who had 
attended college. According to these figures Chancellor 
Smith of the Randolph-Macon College estimated that the 
boy with only a common-school education had, in round 
numbers, one chance in 9000 of becoming distinguished, 
that a high school education increased his chances twenty- 



350 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

fold, and that a college boy's chances were 200 times as 
good as those of the boy who stopped with the high school." 
One of every 3000 American men is named in Who's Who, 
but one of every 6y 2 Harvard graduates is there recorded. 
The remark is sometimes made that " college valedic- 
torians are never heard of afterward." The last study 
proved that this is untrue. While 15 of every hundred liv- 
ing Harvard graduates are in " Who's Who," 73 of every 
hundred valedictorians are there and over 42 of every hun- 
dred summa cum laude men. 

THE BEST VALUE OF TRAINING 

Success in life is not altogether a matter of income and 
prominence. Countless educated men of small incomes and 
inconspicuous places have what President Eliot has called 
" the durable satisfactions." They have tasteful homes, 
they read good books, they think fine thoughts, they are 
bringing up refined children, they are living for everything 
that is worth while. I heard a librarian the other day, all 
whose surroundings are modest, speak in scorn of the " ef- 
ficiency men " who never have time to sit under the cherry 
trees and listen to the wood-robins. I remember a young 
man who had been dropped from college. He was speak- 
ing lightly of his class valedictorian. As he expressed it: 
" The college gave him a Phi Beta Kappa key, and it gave 
me ' the can,' but I am earning three times as much money 
as he is." I drew him out to describe his classmate's home 
and daily life, and as I looked about his own cheerless and 
tasteless dwelling, saw his uneducated wife and remem- 
bered that he spent his life as a traveling salesman for shot- 
guns, while his cultured classmate was teaching young lives, 
I could not see that he had made the better bargain. 



THE VALUE OF TRAINING 351 

It does take a very long time for us to get ready. 
George E. Johnson says, nearly one-third of our span of 
years. A cat is a kitten, he adds, for about one-twelfth of 
its life; a dog is a puppy for one-tenth of*its life; it takes 
a horse only about one-seventh of its life to come to ma- 
turity. But why begrudge the delay? You are not fitting 
to be a cat or a horse. Yours is a more magnificent destiny. 
Remember what Bliss Carman says in his " Marching 
Morrows " : 

" The dust is on their corselets ; 
Their marching fills the world; 
With conquest after conquest 
Their banners are unfurled. 

" There's not a hand to stay them 
Of all the hearts that brave, 
No captain to undo them, 
No cunning to off-stave. 

" Yet fear thou not ! If haply 
Thou be the kingly one, 
They'll set thee in their vanguard 
To lead them round the sun." 



XLV 
THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 

ECONOMY is held among the Japanese to be a high 
virtue. Everybody's tells this story. Two old misers 
of Tokyo were one day discussing ways and means of sav- 
ing. 

" I manage to make a fan last about twenty years," said 
one, " and this is my system : I don't waste fully open the 
whole fan and wave it carelessly. I open only one section 
at a time. That is good for about a year. Then I open the 
next, and so on until the fan is eventually used up." 

" Twenty years for a good fan ! " exclaimed the other. 
" What sinful extravagance ! In my family, we use a fan 
for two or three generations, and this is how we do it: 
We open the whole fan, but we don't wear it out by wav- 
ing it. Oh, no ! We hold it still, like this, under our nose, 
and wave our face ! " 

There is hardly any danger that an American would be 
as saving as all that. 

The trouble with most of us is that we get conquered by 
our " must haves." Ellen Conway writes of these in For- 
ward. 

" MUST HAVES " 

Aunt Adelaide detests " must haves." Last winter Pris- 
cilla felt she " must have " some angora mittens, because 
" all the girls " were having them. (The number proved 

352 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 353 

to be four when Rob called for the count.) This spring 
she " must have " silk stockings for the same reason. 

" You don't find out what you ' must have/ " says Aunt 
Adelaide, " by looking at other people. You find out by 
looking into your own pocket-book. The ' must ' is right 
there — only, more likely, it's a * must not/ " 

In America, as Aunt Adelaide says, girls in moderate 
circumstances, and poor girls as well, are brought into closer 
contact with girls who are really rich than they are in any 
other country. We call this democratic mingling a fine 
thing. But it won't be a fine thing if it leads the poorer 
girl to feel that she must strain every nerve to keep up with 
the richer one, and make not only herself but her whole 
family miserable by the effort. It won't be a fine thing 
unless the poorer girl can have independence and spirit 
enough to go quietly on according to the standard set by her 
own purse. 

After all, it is not because Priscilla's " must haves " tempt 
her to discontent and extravagance that I am most afraid 
of them. It is because they show such a failure to ap- 
preciate what the genuine necessities of life — the true 
" must haves " — really are. Priscilla has never known 
what it was to be without comfortable clothes or sufficient 
food. I fancy there are girls even in her own class at 
school who would be more vigorous if they could be more 
generously fed. I am sure there are girls who would be 
in better health now if they had worn heavier suits last 
winter. How petty and trivial, to any of those girls, 
would seem Priscilla's solicitude about angoras and fancy 
hose ! And, after all, the real " must have " are tho'se we 
put away inside the mind and not outside the body. 



354 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

MOTIVES FOR THRIFT 

There are many praiseworthy motives for thrift, among 
which the following may be named: 

Gratitude to those who have nurtured us. 

Desire to use time and energy for what is worth while. 

The wish to try one's self out. 

The development of a latent talent. 

The longing to get started in life. 

Wanting money to spend. 

Wanting money to give. 

The purpose to make a home for another. 

As a close second to a worthy motive for saving is a 
study of 

WHAT THRIFT CAN DO 

You have perhaps read how a man might save enough 
money to buy a good house and lot after a while, if he 
would lay aside a sum each day equal to what the average 
man spends on tobacco. I had thought this was a pleasing 
fiction, but Professor William A. McKeever says that it has 
actually been done. The man's name is Luther Prescbtt 
Hubbard and he is in business at 96 Wall Street, New 
York. He chewed at twelve, and then he smoked until he 
was twenty-five. He smoked six cigars a day, at 6J4 cents 
each. At twenty-five he began to put that amount of money 
in the bank, and it amounted at the end of one year to 
$136.50. With the funds saved from his tobacco account 
he educated all his children, gave freely to benevolences 
and had plenty left beside. This sum, put at interest and 
compounded, would amount, if not disturbed at all, at the 
age at which Mr. Hubbard made his report, eighty-five, to 
$118,924.26. 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 355 

In looking for some practical, convincing story of what 
thrift will actually do we came across a remarkable little 
leaflet with an interesting history. It was written by Rob- 
ert Schulz, a boy who is employed in the Philadelphia 
Wanamaker store, and it was prepared in connection with 
his work in the evening school of the store. It attracted 
such favorable attention from the superintendent of the 
Commercial Institute of the store, through whose kindness 
it came to me, that John Wanamaker was glad to publish it. 
The writer entitled it: "Thrift: the Imaginary Story of 
Dick Saver and Martin Spender." 

It was half-past twelve as Martin Spender and Dick 
Saver stood talking before the employees' entrance of the 
great store in which they were clerks. They were nine- 
teen years of age, and entering upon their second year in 
business life. Each received eight dollars a week, yet, 
.strange to say, Martin seemed to be the more prosperous. 
Home conditions could not account for this, as both their 
fathers earned comfortable salaries. 

Martin seemed the essence of success: dressed in a good 
serge suit, with a tie in the latest style, in which was fast- 
ened a gold riding crop, he made, with his clean-cut fea- 
tures, a figure not to pass unnoticed by either sex. Of this 
fact Mr. Martin Spender was well aware, and forthwith 
had acquired a ready tongue and an assured manner. Dick 
was quite the opposite. Indeed, the most lucid way to de- 
scribe him is to say he was easily lost in a crowd. Per- 
haps his eyes were a bit clearer, and his chin more pro- 
nounced than the average. Gazing at him, one was some- 
how reminded of bulldogs and tenacity. 

But what are the two commencing to argue about? 
Listen! Martin Spender is speaking. 



356 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS , 

" Dick, you make me sick ! You can't expect me to go 
to lunch with you, if you insist upon eating at one of those 
cheap dairy places. For a little more we can get a dandy 
dinner at a regular restaurant. Why! you're getting so 
stingy lately, I half believe you are in love and saving to 
be married ! " 

Dick flushed, and denied it; then, forcing a laugh, he 
said : " I can't help it, Martin ; I'm going to stick to my 
twenty-cent lunch. I find it is plenty, and* to tell the truth, 
I cannot afford to spend more. You know, I pay mother 
four dollars a week board. If I spent more for lunches, I'd 
be eating into that last raise of mine." 

" Well, what's a raise for ? " inquired Martin, in a sar- 
castic tone. 

"Why! to save, of course. If we could get along on 
what we earned before, .why won't the same amount do 
after we receive a raise? I've saved nine dollars of that # 
last increase which I received less than three months ago." 

Martin sneered. " What will nine dollars buy, I'd like 
to know! Swell chance to see me starve myself and miss 
a couple of dances and the theater, and wear old-fashioned 
ties, for nine dollars! Nothing doing! When I want 
money, I want it big." 

A flicker of fire came into Dick's eyes. 

" I thought like you, until reading about thrift and the 
lives of great men made me realize that big money is made 
by a number of small things combined with time. I think 
a successful man must do more than work and earn; — he 
must save! That's what I am going to do, Martin; and if 
you are not, why, I guess our paths must separate." 

"Oh, bosh!" replied Martin. "Why save on the 
lunches and spoil our fun for ten cents a day ? " 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 357 

" Martin," said Dick, " do you know that ten cents a 
day, with interest, saved steadily for ten years, amounts 
to four hundred dollars ? " 

" Oh, well ! " sighed Martin ; " save it on something else. 
Don't be so confounded thrifty where friendship is con- 
cerned.' ' 

" I can't save it on anything else, because anything else 
won't be ' it.' Thrift, Martin, is the habit of bringing all 
small amounts into line and sweating a profit out of them. 
I guess my ideas do not agree with yours," continued Dicky 
as he saw the smile on Martin's face, " but remember, ' He 
laughs best who laughs last,' and I am not the one who 
is laughing at present." Then, turning on his heel, he en- 
tered the building. 

"Chestnuts!" jeered Martin, none the less strangely 
uncomfortable in the face of the other's firmness. 

TEN YEARS LATER 

Martin Spender has reached a position of some au- 
thority in one of the smaller departments, and earns thirty- 
five dollars a week. 

Dick Saver is assistant to one of the store's managers, 
at twenty-five dollars a week. 

The young men still live with their parents, and each 
pays fifteen dollars a week for his board and room. 

But here the resemblance stops. 

Martin has four suits made to order each year. Dick 
gets along with two or three of the ready-to-wear sort at 
eighteen or twenty dollars apiece. 

Martin pays five or six dollars for his shoes. Dick walks 
just as well in the three-dollar kind. 

The Spenders have moved out to a suburb, and Martin 



358 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

takes the train back and forth from work, though it is only 
forty minutes' ride in the trolley. The Savers live near 
the city, and, in the spring and fall, Dick can walk to work 
in twenty-five minutes. 

Martin eats in places where a ten-cent tip is expected 
with the forty-cent or fifty-cent lunch. Dick never spends 
more than thirty cents. 

Martin buys a one dollar and fifty cent or two dollar 
seat for nearly every musical comedy and prize-fight that 
comes to town. Dick goes occasionally to see a good drama 
or comedy, and once a month, during the season, to the 
opera. He never pays more than a dollar to see the former, 
nor more than two dollars for the latter. 

Martin is hardly ever at home in the evening. He goes 
to balls and banquets and to clubs. In other words, he is 
" popular with the boys." Dick is at home three or four 
nights a week, reading a good book, or planning an easier 
and better method for some work in the office. Often he 
is busy becoming the most popular man with the youngsters 
down at his church. The remaining evenings, he attends 
the meetings of the local business men's club, and the insur- 
ance and beneficial lodges to which he belongs. 

Martin sometimes starts a bank account, saves about two 
or three hundred dollars, and then spends it on some lux- 
ury like a launch or a motorcycle. Dick has had an ever- 
increasing bank account since his eighteenth year, and is in 
good standing with several building and loan associations. 

Thus we find them when they both fall in love with the 
same young woman — a sweet, attractive and sensible girl, 
the daughter of a bank official. 

Two years pass, and they come to know each other as 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 359 

rivals. Martin is now earning forty dollars a week, and 
Dick thirty dollars. 

Mr. Spender really loves this young lady, and, with much 
inconvenience to himself, he saves one thousand dollars in 
a little over a year — quite a painful feat for one so accus- 
tomed to the pleasant things of life as he. Still, he does 
not feel he has enough to ask her to become his wife. No. 
He is sure of her. ' He will wait another year or so, and 
add another thousand dollars ; then they can have a delight- 
ful honeymoon and start life right. 

Oh! foolish Martin! No young woman will wait in- 
definitely, especially when a quiet, practical man is your 
rival. 

On a morning two months later, Mr. Spender is aston- 
ished to see in all the papers the announcement of the en- 
gagement of Miss Lucy Goodwin to Mr. Dick Saver. 

Now, with all his faults, Martin is a man. After the 
shock, he goes to see Miss Lucy, and wishes her every suc- 
cess and all the luck possible. And she, full of her new 
joy, forgetting that he, too, loves her, tells him all about 
the house Dick is building, the trip they are to take, and a 
thousand and one things " dear Dick " is going to do. 

Amazed, Martin inquires when Dick inherited the money. 

Lucy looks surprised. " Inherited money? Why, he 
saved it all himself ! " 

" But he only makes about thirty dollars a week ! " 

" Well ! " challenges Dick's future wife ; " don't you think 
he is extremely clever to be able to save so much out of 
thirty dollars a week? " 

" How much has he? " faintly asks Martin. 

" Over two thousand dollars in cash, and eighteen hun- 



360 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

dred dollars in building and loan associations which will 
mature this year," proudly replies Miss Lucy Goodwin. 

Mr. Spender walks away, dazed, to do some thinking 
and acquire some wisdom. He realizes now that " he laughs 
best who laughs last," and, moreover, he reflects on how 
sweet it is to hear the woman one loves say: " He is just 
splendid ! " How empty now seem the compliments of his 
host of friends! His awakening has come too late! 

Yet — has it? No; it is never too late. How can he 
undo twelve years of wrong financial managing? Is it pos- 
sible ? 

He walks the floor, till at last, tired out, he sits down 
to figure out what he might have saved, now, had he acted 
something like Dick. He starts with the day they disagreed, 
a little over twelve years ago. He sets down on paper, as 
exactly as he can, the various items which could be called 
luxuries — things he could have done without or bought 
more economically. Here is his list : 

( i ) About 5 cents a day on needless carfare, for 350 days 

in 12 years $210.00 

(2) Smoking, about 50 cents a week, 52 weeks, 12 years 310.00 

(3) Lunches, 10 cents a day too much for 12 years 410.00 

(4) Made-to-order suits, $10 too much on each suit, four 

suits a year, for the last 8 years 320.00 

(5) Theaters, $1.00 a week too much, season of 40 weeks, 

for the last 10 years 400.00 

(6) Dues and good times in yacht and gunning clubs, for 

the last 5 years 550.00 

(7) Flowers, candy, cab-fares, and presents to friends, 
during the last 10 years, on occasions not absolutely- 
necessary 500.00 

(8) Doctor's bills for indigestion and nervous troubles 
occurring as a result of late hours and too many ban- 
quets, last 5 years 200.00 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 361 

(9) For popular but senseless novels and yellow maga- 
zines during last 10 years , 100.00 

(10) Incidentals: For 75-cent and $1.00 ties, when 50- 
cent ones look just as well; silk socks, that wear out 
more quickly than the other kind; silk shirts, fancy 
shoes, needless stick pins, watch fobs, fancy-handled 
umbrellas ; needless extra expenses on vacations, etc., 
last 5 years . — 350.00 



Total spent on unnecessary things $3,350.00 

Losses — in Money: This principal, drawing interest, or 
invested in bonds or in a building and loan association, 
would have earned between five hundred and eight hundred 
dollars. 

In Opportunity: Three years ago he had been offered 
a good business chance in a growing firm if he had had 
twenty-five hundred dollars in cash. He had to let it go by. 
Since then this business has been earning an ever-increasing 
profit, and is expanding greatly. The money value of the 
opportunity thus lost is incalculable when reckoned in years. 

HOW TO SAVE 

Leakage is the universal enemy of all forms of thrift 
and progress. 

One of the best ways to earn money is to save it. Nearly 
all banks now will accept very small initial deposits. Go 
with your father to some substantial bank and carry with 
you such funds as you have saved. Learn from him how 
to make out a deposit slip. Study the way the amounts 
in your bank book are credited and examine and watch how 
interestingly your money grows as interest is added to it. 

Suppose you have made a good stroke to-day by saving 
a cent out of your nickel, a dime out of your dollar, or any 



362 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

sum, what shall you do with it? Bank it that your score 
may count, says the Progressive Teacher. 

If you are within reach of a savings bank, a school 
savings bank, a regular bank with a savings department, 
or a settlement with a savings class, find what is the small- 
est sum they will accept as first deposit, and if you have not 
enough money, play hard until you score a victory and make 
your first deposit in the bank. Then you have qualified for 
a boy banker. 

The United States government also has a postal savings 
department at many of the postoffices throughout the land, 
and you may begin with a dime. Buy stamps, exchange 10 
stamps for a dollar certificate. Exchange $20 of your de- 
posit certificates for a bond. Then you become a bond- 
holder of the United States and your bond bears interest at 
the rate oi 2 J / 2 per cent. 

In country places, especially on the farm, where pennies 
may be scarce, you may persuade your father to help you 
enter the game by giving you a garden plot, a pig, a cow, 
a pony, or something which conveys ownership and the 
sense of value. A toy bank may serve to hold the coins not 
readily spent in the country. If you play the game steadily 
your pennies will accumulate to dollars and something of 
value may be purchased. Fortunate is the boy whose father 
enters into the game with him and helps him spend his 
money by buying live stock which will steadily increase in 
value. When the time for selling comes, the young capi- 
talist should be allowed to put his funds in the nearby bank 
or helped to invest them profitably again. 

It may not mean much to save a dollar to-day, but when 
one enters college or business every dollar retrieved is the 
best of friends. 



THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 363 

HOW TO KEEP PERSONAL ACCOUNTS 

Books ruled after every conceivable system can be bought 
at the stationer's, but none of them are just exactly what 
you want for this purpose, and accordingly it is just as 
well to get a cloth-covered blank book which you can rule 
yourself according to the system illustrated here. The 
sample page was suggested by a recent article in the Youth's 
Companion. 

Every item of receipt and every item of expenditure 
should be entered in order, but the chief value of the ac- 
count will be lost unless the sums paid out are grouped 
under certain heads, instead of being merely set down one 
under the other and then added. What you need to know 
is not merely how much you spend but what proportion you 
spend needlessly. 

The column for clothing implies that you buy your own 
clothes and this account is kept from month to month and 
year to year and is very important to you in checking the 
cost of staple articles of apparel. The column for food 
does not include the regular family meals, unless you pay 
your board, but is intended rather to keep account of school 
lunches, sodas, etc., or anything in the way of food which 
you pay out of your own pocket. 

The column for recreation is intended for the amount 
you spend upon the " movies," theater, parties, picnics, 
camping, or any form of pleasure. The column for higher 
life includes expenses of educational journeys, books or 
magazines bought, tickets to lectures and concerts that are 
educational rather than recreational, and money given to the 
church or charity. The column for sundries will include 
everything that eludes classification. Put down frankly 
everything that you have forgotten. 



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THE JOY OF SAVING MONEY 365 

Footings should be made every week, or else mistakes 
and omissions will not be noted. The amount of cash on 
hand should correspond at all times with what the book 
shows. The separate columns are of course added up at 
the foot of each page and the totals carried over to the head 
of the next page. 

WHAT THRIFT PROVES 

"The habit of thrift," says William A. McKeever, 
" proves your power to rule your own self. You are cap- 
tain of your soul. You are able to take care of yourself, 
and then out of the excess of your strength you produce a 
surplus. 

" Thus you are not only able to take care of yourself, 
but you are able to take care of some one else — of wife, 
child, father and mother, to lend a hand to sick people, old 
people, unfortunate people. This is to live. 

" The man who cannot earn a living for himself is some- 
thing less than a man. The man who can barely get a living 
and no more is little better than a barbarian or a savage." 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THRIFT 

"What a youth earns in the daytime goes into his pocket. 
What he spends in the night-time goes into his character." 

Save every coin of a particular denomination that comes into 
your pocket. Start with pennies; by and by try dimes. 

Give yourself a note against yourself for $1000. Meet the in- 
terest regularly and put it in the bank; then save to pay yourself 
the principal. If you should do this for ten or twelve years you 
would have at least $2000. 

Make believe that you are a son of your " boss " who is learn- 
ing his father's business from the bottom, and see how fast you 
can climb. Maybe you will sometime be where the son of the boss 
might have been. 



366 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Stimulate yourself to save waste by forcing yourself to note 
down each night for a time what you have lost by carelessness and 
neglect during the day: a mislaid handkerchief; a watch broken 
by carrying it into a game; candy burned by overcooking; a lost 
textbook; a coat ruined by being left out in the rain; work that 
took twice as long to do because it had to be done with a neglected 
tool. These are pennies lost that will have to be earned again. . 

Organize a Thrifters' Club of fellows who will agree not only 
to save but to pool their savings and invest them together. Each 
one must promise to save a certain sum each month. Organize 
like a corporation, and have an investment committee, and a review 
committee to study investments and check up the investment com- 
mittee. By investing comparatively large sums you can get larger 
returns than with the small amounts that you can earn alone 
through a savings bank, and the cooperative idea keeps up the 
effort and courage of each. 



XLVI 
HOW OTHERS DECIDED 

I HAVE been gathering facts lately to show how others 
who have done great or good work in the world have 
been led to decide about their lifework. 

I find that many have been led into their callings by what 
seemed accident. 

Jacob Riis when a young man was a reporter. One day 
in a storm, hurrying to get his news into the office, he ran 
into his city editor and knocked him into a snowdrift. The 
next morning when the editor summoned him he expected 
to be discharged, but the editor promoted him to a place in 
reporting at the police headquarters. It was what he 
learned here about the sorrows of the poor that led him to 
do such *wonderful work in cleaning up " where the other 
half lives." J. A. Burns was a mountain boy in the South. 
One day he was wounded in a feud with his neighbors. 
While he lay sick and thus had some time to think he de- 
cided that he would get an education and push his way out 
of this rough neighborhood. After he had been to school 
he wanted to go back and help the sons of his old neighbors, 
and now " Burns of the Mountains " is called a new Abra- 
ham Lincoln, and his school has brought many hundreds of 
boys and girls out of ignorance. Dorothea Dix when a girl 
was an invalid. One day she happened to make a visit to 
an insane asylum, where she saw maniacs chained to the 
floor. Her pity led her to make a public report of facts 

367 



368 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that not only horrified Massachusetts but that sent her out 
all her life long to help the helpless. 

When Corinna Shattuck was a schoolgirl she was one 
day asked to get up a missionary meeting. In order to 
make it interesting she wrote a letter to a schoolgirl in 
Turkey. As the result of this correspondence she was 
asked after she finished school to go to Turkey herself, 
and there for many years she was a heroic and helpful 
worker. When Antony Ashley-Cooper was a boy he saw 
a pauper's coffin jostled over the stones and learned that the 
body was about to be buried in the ground without any 
services. Many years afterward when he was the Earl of 
Shaftesbury and world-famous for his services for the 
poor he used to come back to this place and point to it as 
his " Decision." When George Hinckley was a small boy 
he used to pity very much a poor schoolmate who had no 
father or mother. Later, when he was grown up, an orphan 
boy came to his home and asked for shelter. He took a 
second and a third and by and by he had a houseful. To- 
day three hundred orphan boys and girls live around him in 
cottages in Maine and call him father. 

David Livingstone when a poor medical student heard 
James Moffat say in a public address that Africa was the 
spot in the world where a young man's life would count 
for the most. Forty years later he was buried in West- 
minster Abbey, because he had been the light-bringer to 
that whole dark continent. There was once a convict lad 
in the South who was so hard-hearted that he would not 
listen when a visitor offered to read the Bible to him, but 
he was so much impressed by the unselfishness of Sidney 
Carton in Dickens' story which the stranger read that he 
started out at once to try to be like him, and he succeeded. 



HOW OTHERS DECIDED 369 

HOW CURIOSITY HAS LED 

Perhaps your future calling may be determined by your 
having had something beautiful or wonderful about it called 
to your attention when you were a child. You have heard 
how Galileo was set to work to investigate great laws of 
nature by noticing the movements of a hanging lamp that 
had been left swinging by the sexton in the cathedral of 
Pisa, how Newton found out the law of gravitation from 
observing the fall of an apple and how Watt studied the 
possibilities of steam by the aid of his grandmother's tea- 
kettle. The principle of the suspension bridge was found 
by one who as a boy had studied the spider's cobweb ; Pas- 
teur, the great French scientist, was led to his lifework 
by being shown a microscope on a school picnic ; and Fara- 
day, who was years after offered a lofty rank by his queen, 
but who preferred to remain " plain Michael Faraday " un- 
til his death, was drawn in the direction of his painstaking 
and marvelous experiments from reading some pages of the 
"Encyclopedia Britannica " when as an apprentice to the 
bookbinder he was fastening them together. Palissy had 
his interests aroused in pottery when as a lad he was shown 
a dainty Italian cup. He gave to the investigation of glaz- 
ing and coloring such sacrifices that he was deemed crazy 
even by his best friends, but that boyish zeal led not only 
to the discovery of the way to shape the rarest porcelain, 
it also made him such a hero and fearless Christian that 
he was able to say to his monarch, " Guisants, all your peo- 
ple and Your Majesty yourself cannot compel a poor potter 
to bow down to images of clay." Theodore Parker was 
made a theologian when he was in school by studying the 
structure of the turtle. Edward Everett Hale began to com- 
pose his interesting and helpful tales when in his father's 



370 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

library he discovered some stories by Walter Scott. Whit- 
tier's poetic genius was kindled when a vagabond Scotch- 
man was entertained over night at his father's house and 
recited some of the verses of Robert Burns. Ruskin learned 
to love this beautiful world and to want to make others 
love it when at eleven years of age from the banks of the 
Rhine he saw the snowy Alps. Millet, the painter of the 
beauty of homely life, got his first impressions from the 
stories and illustrations of an old family Bible. 

GUIDED BY THE CALL OF DUTY 

Occasionally the voice which has summoned young lads 
to their future has been none other than the still, small 
voice of daily duty. Benjamin Franklin was led onward 
not by any startling vision, but by the exigencies of his 
father's large family and by alternate successes and failures 
as a printer boy. John Winthrop seems to have been sub- 
ject to no special guidance, but when as a middle-aged man 
he was asked to lead the Puritan Colony to Massachusetts 
Bay he did so, as he had been in the habit of doing every- 
thing else, simply because it was the next duty. A beauti- 
ful story is told of John Ruskin that when he was in Venice 
he was in the habit of giving every day a small alms to a 
beggar who crouched beside his way and that one day the 
beggar in gratitude gave him a relic from an ancient church 
which led Ruskin to the discovery of the frescoes of Giotto 
and to the writing of his masterpiece, " The Stones of 
Venice." 

HOW DISCOURAGEMENT HAS HELPED 

Not only encouragements but sometimes disappointments 
and failures have been bells which have called youths to their 



HOW OTHERS DECIDED 371 

lifework. The lameness of Sir Walter Scott when he was 
a boy made him a reader and his reading gave him his mar- 
velous fund of historical information which made possible 
the " Waverley Novels." Washington wished to be a sailor 
and was sorely disappointed at his mother's decision, but his 
filial obedience decided his future as the Father of his Coun- 
try. John C. Fremont was expelled from school because 
of a foolish infatuation which he mistook for love, but it 
resulted in being thrown on his own resources, and made a 
man of him. Nathaniel P. Banks was stung by the ridicule 
of a fellow workman, but many years later as the Governor 
of Massachusetts, he received a humble petition from this 
same workman as the agent from the mill of which he him- 
self had graduated to become Governor. Oliver Cromwell 
failed in his plans to migrate to America; if he had suc- 
ceeded the whole history of England would have been differ- 
ent. 

In almost every one of these cases the boy or the girl who 
met the " accident " that made him great or good was eager 
to find the best. So I usually say to boys and girls, Keep 
as many windows open as you can and look out of every one 
of them as often as you can, and some day you will find 
your Calling coming down the road to meet you with a song 
on its lips and a smile in its eye and both of its hands full 
of good work for you. 



XLVII 
THE FINAL CHOICE OF A CALLING 

THE following hints may be helpful in the careful choice 
of a vocation : 

I. Do not make the final decision until it is necessary. 
For a high-school boy or girl who is going to college it is 
comforting to know that vocational courses in college do 
not begin to differentiate sharply until the beginning of 
sophomore year. Many who pursue the classical course do 
not decide until they leave college. The less thorough your 
preparation the sooner usually you have to decide. 

Sometimes a young man has said to me, " I don't want to 
go any farther without stopping to decide just what I am 
aiming for." That sounds well ; it seems prudent, but it is 
not wise. 

Very few boys and girls in high school know themselves, 
or the world's work, or what will make up their future, so 
well that they can possibly forecast it to-day. I remember 
one boy of my acquaintance who had a book in which he 
had put down, the date he would leave school, the college 
he would enter, the date he would be graduated, the time 
he would spend in studying law, the year he would get mar- 
ried, and, I presume, the times at which he would retire 
and go to heaven. I never heard how he came out, but I 
doubt if he was able to fulfill his schedule. 

Gowin and Wheatley very wisely counsel : " Do not stop 

372 



THE FINAL CHOICE OF A CALLING 373 

to decide; go ahead to decide." The same preliminary 
preparation will be needed in any case. One may wisely at 
least finish high school. The first year in college even is 
likely to be the same, no matter what vocation one may 
pursue. The specializing will not be due for several years, 
and when it is time for it, one will probably know better 
how to choose. 

To " stop to decide " by leaving school is usually most 
foolish of all methods. Too often it means mere day- 
dreaming and drifting. It means the abandonment of the 
foundation-laying that underlies all work that is worth 
while. It is unlikely that the work that offers will afford 
as good a means of getting information as the broadening 
influence of school, with the opportunity there to read books 
and to engage in processes that point toward many attrac- 
tive occupations. 

It is not unusual for a student to finish college without 
being able to make the final decision. I confess that I knew 
less the day I was graduated, at twenty, what I would be 
than the day I entered, but / had found out how to find out, 
as I could not have found out by being in a hurry to decide. 

2. Eliminate by experience. What you try out summers 
may at least show you, one by one, the vocations you do not 
want to follow. 

Gowin and Wheatley urge the use of vacations to help 
discover what one can best do. " Vacations are harvest 
time for the ambitious boy. They furnish a time for test- 
ing himself out. If you have decided to be a merchant, 
spend one vacation in a dry-goods store, another in a hard- 
ware store ; or try your hand at furniture, and possibly in a 
grocery store or in a lumber yard. You will not earn a 
great deal while trying out these different vocations, but 



374 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

you ought to regard the experience gained as very valuable." 

Dr. Herman Schneider shows how necessary it often is 
to try a boy at several different tasks before he finds the 
work for which he was intended. " A young man called 
one morning and presented a splendid scholarship record 
from a rigorous high school. He was a most attractive 
youngster — sturdy, clear-eyed and cheerful, but he had not 
the faintest idea what he wanted to do for a lifework. The 
whole world looked good to him, but no lead I made could 
discover any particular bent. He smilingly offered to try 
anything, and finally offered to try everything we had, so 
as to arrive at something by a process of elimination. 

" We started him at foundry work. He didn't like it, 
so he went cheerfully from one type of work to another for 
two years, always working hard and faithfully, but without 
satisfaction, either to himself or to his employers. His 
school work was excellent except in technical courses. All 
this time we were taking account of his talents. Certain 
characteristics began to stand out, and one day the question 
was put to him bluntly, ' How would you like to be a li- 
brarian ? ' His response might possibly be called a grate- 
ful, unanimous yell." 

He had really found himself. 

3. Compare the vocations carefully. Try them by the 
vocation-qualities chart and by the list of questions already 
suggested, filling out separate answers for each vocation, 
and then compare the results. 

There are two reasons why you should make some study 
of a variety of vocations. One is, that you want to give 
yourself the largest chance possible. It may be that more 
thorough investigation of employments would show that 
another than the one you favor now is more attractive and 



THE FINAL CHOICE OF A CALLING 375 

more suited to your abilities. Another reason is, that in 
many occupations one finds that he " gets into a little of 
everything." A salesman can sell to men in various call- 
ings if he knows a little something about each of their call- 
ings. A lawyer often has occasion to take the standpoint 
of men in other occupations, just to do his legal work 
well. A minister needs to understand a carpenter and a 
blacksmith. All our work brings us into such close and 
often friendly relations with each other that the better we 
understand each other's work the better we can work to- 
gether. 

Look for work that is stimulating. If you look about 
you, you will be amazed to find the number of tasks in 
which there seems to be no possibility of interest and little 
chance for advancement. The motorman, the night-watch- 
man, the enlisted soldier, the flagman, the checker, the ele- 
vator man — you can think of a hundred humdrum callings 
that involve doing the same uninteresting thing every day 
as long as one lives. And since there seems no doubt, as 
Dean Herman Schneider tells us, that " energizing work 
is decreasing; enervating work is increasing," peculiar cau- 
tion is necessary on a youth's part lest he sink or drift into 
one of the uninteresting vocations. 

4. Having made a thoughtful choice, be slow to change. 
As Frank Parsons used to say : " You have a house half 
or two-thirds built, the walls well up, almost ready to put 
the roof on; now is it wise to leave the building you have 
so nearly completed and go off to a new location, dig a new 
cellar, and begin building all over again, when you do not 
know that you will like the new building any better than the 
old, when you get it? " 

Occasionally men and women change their vocations in 



376 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

middle life. This may be due to unfortunate circumstances, 
but where the change is voluntary it is often happy. " To 
make a life is more than to make a living, " Governor Rus- 
sell used to say. The man at middle age may have devel- 
oped abilities that a different calling can better express, or 
he may have found that he had talents that another voca- 
tion left unexpressed that he now desired to employ. This, 
however, is not a contingency that a young person needs 
even to think of. He should plan to choose slowly, wisely, 
and so lose no motive power through change. 

If we can, by a long course of self -study and preparation, 
discover clearly just what we are fitted for we may save 
ourselves the waste of many years of experiment. Pro- 
fessor William A. McKeever states that of fifty prosperous 
men, who were asked to give an account of their experiences 
in finding for themselves a permanent occupation, twenty- 
seven confessed to having tried one or more unsatisfactory 
lines of work before taking up the right one. Some of 
their statements are given in condensed form below. 

i. A Wealthy Farmer: First learned the trade of a car- 
penter, then became a dry-goods clerk, and afterwards an 
insurance agent. Disliked them all. Called unexpectedly 
to manage the farm of an absent owner, and thus learned 
to enjoy the business of farming. 

2. President of a Denominational College: Became by 
turns a clerk in a store, a wagon maker, a painter and paper- 
hanger, and at 24 a minister, finally assuming present posi- 
tion. 

3. A Lumber Dealer : Finished college at 18. Sold pea- 
nuts and papers on a train, worked on section, drove mule 
team on railroad construction work, steward of boarding- 



THE FINAL CHOICE OF A CALLING 377 

car for construction gang, clerk in lumber yard, finally 
owner of a string of profitable yards. 

4. Attorney : First ambition was to become a cartoonist 
and journalist, but was side-tracked by parents. Tried med- 
icine a few months and did not like it. Went on road as 
agent selling maps and by a mere incident was attracted to 
law. Still believes that the first ambition was the right 
thing to develop. 

5. A Banker: First learned the jeweler's trade, owning 
a stock. Did not like the work, so accepted clerkship in a 
bank, afterwards becoming cashier. Has been successful 
banker 20 years. 

6. A Commission Merchant: Tried, with some degree 
of success, farming, teaching, cashier in bank, the lumber 
business. Began present work at 35, and for the first time 
felt that he was rightly occupied and fully satisfied with his 
occupation. 

Some of these experiments no doubt turned out to be 
educational. Perhaps the college president was a more prac- 
tical one because of his business experience, and perhaps 
the lumber dealer was a broader man because he went to 
college. We need not be discouraged if we do not find our 
niche at the beginning. But, other things being equal, the 
study of many opportunities, through books on vocation and 
preliminary experiences and textbooks of various occupa- 
tions, is less expensive than to go out and learn and then 
unlearn the technique of several trades or businesses. 

Finally, Decide, don't drift. 

" Would you," ask Gowin and Wheatley in their book on 
" Occupations," " consider washing dishes proper work for 
the college-trained man ? Yet we are told that in a certain 



378 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

dish-washers' union of 700 men, 100 are college graduates." 
These men had no practical sense, were unwilling to do any 
hard work, and became drifters. "If you come to know 
some harvesting gang which migrates over the western 
wheat fields, you will find in it men who should themselves 
be owning rich farms. If you study tramps as they use old 
tomato cans for coffee and discarded railroad ties for seats, 
you will find that many are men who should be driving 
trains instead of stealing rides. The longer you ponder 
over this matter the more deeply will the truth be burned 
into your mind, that the world has many drifters and that 
drifting is dangerous/' 



BOOK III 

GOOD FELLOWSHIP 

" O love that passes the love of woman! 
Who that hath felt it shall ever forget, 
When the breath of life with a throb turns human, 
And a lad's heart is to a lad's heart set? " 

G. K. Chesterton. 



In this division of the book: 
Chapters XLVIII-LI explain the real Spirit that is behind Good 

Fellowship. 
Chapters LII-LXVII suggest various Ways in which we can show 

this Spirit. 



XLVIII 
THE TORCH-BEARERS 

I WANT to introduce you to one of our ancestors. 
You notice I said our. That means you and me. 
If we have a common ancestor, then you and I are cousins, 
which is very pleasant. It also means all my readers. 
Then all of us who read this book are related, which is still 
more pleasant. 

It is a wholesome thing, this ancestor-worship, for it 
makes us realize how much we are indebted to our brave 
forefathers and pure-hearted foremothers. 

But it is sometimes a bit dangerous. I was once trying 
to prove to my wife, who is a collateral relative of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, that I was descended from Governor Win- 
slow of the Mayflower. In trying to do this I found that 
I went back to a man who stole a feather bed. There I 
stopped. 

In some ways this common forefather of us all is not so 
creditable as my feather-bed progenitor, and in some other 
ways he is almost a hero. 

If he belongs to us all he must have lived a long way 
back. Indeed he did. He lived so far back that I do not 
know his name; I do not know where he lived; I do not 
know exactly when he lived. But although we have no 
photograph of him I can tell you what he looked like. 

He was square and squat and short, he had neither fore- 

381 



382 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

head nor chin, and he was dressed mostly in his own skin 
and the hide of a wild beast. He lived somewhere in the 
forests of central Europe, and his home was in a cave. 
For this reason he is known to-day as the cave-man. He 
is about the earliest specimen of mankind of whom we 
know. 

This charming forefather of ours spent a good deal of his 
time asleep in his cavern. Occasionally when a passing bear 
darkened its entrance he would creep out and overwhelm 
the beast with his stone hatchet, tear off its skin, plunge his 
short teeth into the still quivering flesh and go back again 
to torpid slumber. His life was one dull succession of sleep 
and eating and fear. For he was afraid of everything. 
He was afraid of the night and of the forest with its night 
of pines ; he was afraid of the tempest and of the lightnings ; 
he was afraid of the wind that tore its pathway through the 
trees and made its road across the gleam-lighted lake; and 
most of all, he was afraid of man, for his hand was against 
every man's and every man's hand was against his. He 
walked on the same green grass we tread and the same blue 
sky was over his head, but he saw no beauty in either. His 
days were spent in orgies of food or in dread of foes, of 
earth and of humanity and of the spirit-world. 

HOW THE FAMILY BEGAN 

In time the cave-man was joined by another, a cave- 
woman. The method of courtship in those days was not 
that with which you are familiar. The cave-man courted 
the cave-woman with the same implement with which he 
chased the cave-bear, and when she roused from her un- 
consciousness the woman recognized her lord and master. 

They made a division of labor. I can imagine the cave- 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 383 

man saying to the cave-woman during their honeymoon: 
" You may do the easy tasks, and I will take the hard work. 
You take care of the house and of the garden " — for let 
us suppose that they grew wheat and knew something of a 
few vegetables and healing herbs — " and of the stock " — ■ 
for let us suppose they had domesticated the musk-ox — 
" and I'll do the hard work — I'll fish." So the woman did 
these few chores, and the man fished. 

But one evening the woman came to the man and showed 
him her hands scratched and her nails worn and torn by 
digging in the earth, and asked him if he could not give her 
a primitive manicure set. Then the man went out and sat 
down on a log, which was the family council-chamber and 
also the dining-room, and tried to think. And as his slow 
thoughts came to him he carelessly unwound the withes that 
held the stone blade to the wooden handle of his hatchet. 
When he fastened them together again he noticed that he 
had put the blade on at right angles to the handle. He had 
made an invention ! He hastened to his wife and presented 
her with a present, the first hoe, and so the hoe became 
woman's badge of toil. 

Some days later the man came in, complaining that his 
nets had broken and that his fingers were all thumbs and 
that he could not fasten them together. Then the woman 
went out to the council-chamber to think. And as she sat 
here her hands carelessly touched a pile of decaying fish- 
bones that had been thrown from the dining-table. And 
picking up two of the sharp bones she happened to stick 
the end of one into the soft cartilage of the other, and 
behold! she too had made an invention. She hastened to 
her husband to present to him the first needle, man's badge 
of toil. After the rise of the first feminist movement, 



384 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

these implements were exchanged, and ever since the badge 
of man has been the hoe and of woman the needle. 

After a year or so there was in the cavern not only a 
cave-man and a cave-woman but also a cave-baby. And 
as has been the case from the dawn of history, the baby at 
once took command. In the first place he objected to 
being moved. In the past whenever the fishbones smelt to 
heaven they had just moved on to another cave. But now 
the baby insisted on staying, and so they cleaned up a bit 
and stayed. Then the baby had the terrible habit of waking 
up at about three or four o'clock in the morning. So the 
mother fastened a huge cave-bear skin across the opening 
of the cave, and when she had done that she unconsciously 
did a very wonderful thing, for the first door gave the first 
privacy, and the seclusion changed what had been the lair 
of beasts to the first home. 

THE FIRST BOATS AND BARTER 

The cave-boy grew to be quite a sizable lad, and as is 
the nature of boys he liked to go in swimming, once or twice 
or five or eight times a day. * And one morning he went 
down to take his early dip, carrying with him a triangle 
of bearskin that his mother had given him for a towel. 
And after he came out of the water he was standing on a 
log that was loosely attached to the shore drying himself, 
when in the exultance of youth he stretched out both arms 
with the bearskin hanging from them down his back. He 
noticed soon that he was in motion. The log had slipped 
from the shore and he was in midstream. Across the 
pond lived enemies, so he scrambled into the water, leaving 
his towel behind, and swam hastily ashore. When he told 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 385 

his adventure at home this ancestor of ours went out and 
sat down on the council-log and wrinkled his brow for an 
unusually long time. The next morning he took two poles 
and a whole bearskin and his hatchet and his boy and went 
down to the shore. He dug a hole in the log and he put 
in a wooden mast instead of a living one and he fastened 
the skin to the crosspiece, and he had invented a sailboat. 
One day when he was out sailing he chanced to meet on 
the water the chieftain of the enemy-tribe across the pond, 
who had invented a canoe. If they had been on land they 
would at once have thrown stones at each other and leaped 
at each other's throats, but as they could not do this each 
raised his right hand solemnly and they fell into friendly 
conversation. Now the men-across-the-pond had learned 
how to make fire and to melt metals and to mold rude 
utensils. Whenever the cavemen desired these dishes they 
had been in the habit of going around the pond and killing 
a few miners and stealing their dishes, and whenever the 
miners wanted any wheat they had gone up the hill and 
killed a few cave-men and stolen their wheat. The sensi- 
ble suggestion now arose that whenever either wanted any- 
thing that belonged to the other each should come out into 
the middle of the pond carrying a store in a boat, and that 
they should barter with the other. Thus began the first 
commerce. 

HOW THEY LIVED IN THE FIRST VILLAGE 

After many years the first cave-man grew old, too old 
to enjoy fighting. One day he said to his kindred : " My 
brothers and my sons and my grandsons, come hither, and 
live in these caves alongside me. And we will put a fence 



386 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

around us, so that we shall not need to set watchmen every 
night and may sleep in safety." So they built a stockade, 
and began the first community. 

But there is a shrewd New England proverb that maybe 
you have heard : " God gives us our relations — but thank 
God, we can choose our friends ! " They soon learned the 
truth of this saying, for living together they quarreled 
with each other almost as much as in the past they had 
done with strangers. Then they all came to the old cave- 
father and they said: "You are the oldest and wisest 
among us. Whenever we have a quarrel, let us turn to you, 
and you shall decide it and we will yield to your judgment." 
So the patriarch became the first judge and king. 

I have told you that they knew nothing of keeping clean. 
The plague came down upon the village, but they could not 
suspect the cause. After considering a long time a man 
arose among them and gave a most ingenious explanation. 
They had often been puzzled by the resemblance between 
sleep and swoon and death. When a man sleeps he is un- 
conscious, but after a time he wakes up. When a man 
swoons he is unconscious, but after a time he wakes up. 
When a man dies he is unconscious, but he never wakes up. 
Where does he go? They had already decided, Far away. 
And pathetically some of them had agreed that these spirits 
of their fathers had gone back, homesick, to whence they 
had come, over the hills. So now this dreamer, for the 
man who arose to explain was a great dreamer, asserted 
that he had seen and heard some of the spirits in his dream, 
and he had learned that they were angry and therefore had 
sent the plague. Why were they angry? Naturally 
enough, they were hungry. Nothing makes a savage so 
irritable as hunger. Nothing brings out the savage in many 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 387 

men to-day sooner than hunger. They had forgotten to 
feed the spirits of their fathers. Now, said this dreamer, 
Bring forth wheat and wine and oil and flesh and put them 
all on this square stone in the middle of our encampment. 
So they hastened to get these sacrifices, and when they had 
all come together the dreamer took the war tom-tom and 
beat upon it loudly to call the attentions of the gods and 
he lifted up his voice and shouted to them. Then they 
put fire underneath their gifts, so that the sweet odor went 
up into the skies and refreshed the spirits. And after a 
while the plague departed. And the dreamer was made the 
first medicine-man and priest. 

Finally, the men of the tribe had all seated themselves one 
evening after a great battle around the common camp-fire. 
They were worn out with fighting, yet to-morrow the enemy 
would attack again. Then the youngest and freshest among 
them, he whose spirit was still hot for war, stood and be- 
gan to stir them for the fray by telling the brave deeds of 
their fathers, they who had never been conquered. And 
as he spoke his voice fell into a chant and unconsciously 
his feet stirred and he began to dance around the fire. And 
one by one they shook off their weariness and arose and 
joined him and shouted and danced around the fire. And 
the next day they won a great victory. So after that they 
brought heaps of wheat and vats of wine to the young 
man's cave, and he became among men the first bard, the 
first historian, the first poet. 

I have turned for you the first page upon which his- 
torians of a somewhat later day have marked the first rude 
scrawls of the human story. But have you noticed how I 
have shown that these cave-men, brutal, savage and abso- 
lutely, were yet unknowing bearers of torches? Did you 



388 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

note that Shelter and Weapons and Food and Fire and 
Homes and Shipping and Commerce and Community Life 
and Laws and Worship and History itself all came from 
these first men who blindly yet faithfully gave these to 
their descendants? 

To-day we float in ships of iron on the once-dreaded 
sea, we dare the tempests before which the cave-men cow- 
ered, our vessels are propelled by the steam and lighted by 
the lightnings that once scared him, and we pierce the dark- 
ness and the solitude that awed him by wireless voices that 
get their momentum from the very forces that made him 
worship. Of the world that made him a craven we are 
masters, but all the substantial gifts in which we rejoice we 
received from his coarse but loyal hands. 

ONE MORNING IN A SCHOOLBOY'S LIFE 

I can perhaps make this thought more emphatic by ask- 
ing you to reverse the picture for a moment. Consider 
what an average ungrateful American schoolboy owes to 
the past every day before ten o'clock in the morning. 

He has come down to breakfast — after having been 
called about three times by his mother, and is perhaps 
still complaining within himself that " the world owes him 
a living" and that he hasn't his share. He sits down at 
table. The table itself came from San Domingo, the linen 
upon it from the Philippines, the china from a country 
of that name underneath the earth, the silver from Nevada. 
His juicy beefsteak was brought him from the high pla- 
teaus of Montana, or the prairies of South America, the 
salt with which he sprinkles it from the open salt mines 
of Rochester and the pepper from Java. Before he woke 
all the continents had been busy to get him his breakfast. 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 389 

Men had crossed the nations and the seas, and delved be- 
neath the earth, had climbed mountains, had risked and 
perhaps given their lives that one unthankful lad should 
have his morning meal. 

He starts for school — after his mother has found his 
hat. At once he sets foot upon the oldest human insti- 
tution. For, except it be the grave, the road is the earliest 
groove that was ever dug in the surface of the earth, the 
track between the first neighbor and the second. 

As he enters the village he notes a black sign with gilt 
letters. That is the doctor's office. But little does this 
unthinking dullard know that this physician, with his store 
of good herbs and his aseptic instruments and his fine touch 
that pierces between the very soul and marrow is the lineal 
descendant of that medicine-man who once beat the tom- 
tom and cried upon the spirits in the cave-man's village. 

He passes the office of a lawyer. Little does he suspect 
that in his sheep-covered volumes decisions are recorded 
that are in a straight line from those words of equity that 
were spoken by the white-bearded cave-man who sat on a 
bearskin before his cavern and made peace among his 
progeny. 

He passes his mother's church. No matter of what de- 
nomination it is, there is inside, in a place of honor, whether 
it be called altar or communion table, be it of wood or 
marble, that which comes down from the great stone that 
once stood in the center of the cave-men's town, before 
which they bowed in fear and raised helpless hands to 
heaven. 

When at length he enters school, he turns at once to the 
most precious single gift that has come from the past. The 
first book he opens shows him — letters. Now letters were 



390 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

first brought, so tradition tells us, by illiterate Phoenician 
pirates in a crazy vessel across the eastern Mediterranean 
to Greece, and from Greece to Rome, and from Rome to 
Germany, and from Germany to England, and from Eng- 
land to America, until the leaves of that tree have been 
the healing of the nations. 

So that instead of the world owing him a living, that boy 
and every boy and girl is born an immeasurable debtor. 

WHAT THE FORGOTTEN TORCH-BEARERS DID 

The line of torch-bearers has never been broken. 
Whether it be the simple or the grander gifts of life those 
to whom they were committed have never failed to hand 
them down. 

My father was born in a log cabin in Vermont. I have 
heard him tell how sometimes his father would waken him 
before day dawn in the chill chamber where the snowflakes 
drifted upon his coverlet, telling him that the fire was out. 
Then he would dress and jump into his snowshoes and take 
the iron firebox with the wooden handle that I still cherish 
beside my own fireplace and go a mile away to the near- 
est neighbors. When he brought back the fresh embers his 
father had already whittled up some dry kindling and in a 
moment the flames were again roaring up the throat of the 
huge chimney. But suppose that in that isolated settle- 
ment in the dead of winter all had lost the gift of fire. In 
the summer when the trading wagons drawn by slow oxen 
went past on their way from Boston to Montreal they would 
have found in that dozen cabins none but stiff and lifeless 
bodies. But these light-bearers never failed. 

I myself am old enough to remember the days before the 
handy dry yeast cake, and often my mother has sent me 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 391 

down into the cellarway to get the yeast bottle refilled. It 
was a foul-smelling thing with a moldy cork, and I still 
recall the wonder with which I used to return from the 
neighbor's with the queer viscous liquid that my mother 
used to pour into her dough. But in an hour we had fresh 
bread again for supper. If, however, in that earlier settle- 
ment all the housewives had lost yeast, bread-making would 
have become a lost art. But the bread-givers were always 
faithful. 

Once in our country there was a whole commonwealth 
that so nearly lost the light that it was known as "the 
Dark and Bloody Ground." This was the State of Ken- 
tucky. But it was saved by faithful torch-bearers. I have 
thought that these men looked much like that greatest son 
of Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, long-legged and long- 
necked, and that they rode long-legged and long-necked 
horses. We know them as the circuit-riders. They had 
on one side of their saddles a loaf of bread and a bowie 
knife and a chunk of jerked beef and on the other, about 
the same size and shape as the loaf of bread, the Bible. 
They rode broadcast, and they carried with them not only 
Bibles and churches, but schools and Sunday schools, and 
better homes and learning and true liberty. These torch- 
bearers never failed, until Kentucky became a fair emerald 
in the crown of the Republic. 

No man, perhaps, can add much to the light that has been 
given him. He may not hope to make much more glorious 
his immediate future. But he can at least be faithful to 
the light that has been handed down. He would be an in- 
grate to stand like a polished but unlighted candle in the 
temple of life or to dash in the dust the sacred torch. 



392 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" O God, that we can dare to fail 
And dare to say we must! 
O God, that we can ever trail 

Such banners in the dust, 
Can let such starry honors pale 
And such a blazon rust ! " 

A DESCRIPTION OF THE GREEK TORCH-RACE 

The lesson of the torch-bearers is best seen in a stirring 
instance out of the athletic life of ancient Greece. The 
Greeks were the athletic race of the past, as we are of the 
present. But each people plays according to its own genius. 
The Greek ideal was that of the harmonious, well-developed 
individual, and so their games were individual games, they 
were foot-races. Our ideal is that of a democracy, and 
so our great games are team-games — we play football and 
baseball. But the Greeks had one game that was a team- 
game, though it was a foot-race. This was the Torch- 
Race. 

Like many other games of the Greeks, the Torch-Race 
was also a religious festival. It was run in honor of 
Prometheus, that divine man who, according to their beau- 
tiful myth, living in the palaces of the gods pitied mankind 
in their fireless, cheerless dwellings and stole fire from the 
altars of Olympus and gave it to men. In memory of the 
vengeance that pursued him, in gratitude for the torch of 
flame, this Torch-Race was run. 

The Torch-Race was at night. I can seem to see the 
breathing thousands gathered on the slopes of the Stadium 
under the soft Grecian starlight. Down in the oval sands 
below stood the contestants, a half dozen of them from 
each of the noble cities of the land, from Athens six, from 
Epirus six, from Sparta six. It was in reality a relay race. 




: For Sweet Mercy's Sake " — An English Girl Revives an Ancient 
Art in Order to Help Raise Money for the Wounded. 



THE TORCH-BEARERS 393 

The first of each city stood shoulder to shoulder with the 
other first men, each holding a lighted torch. The second 
of each side was at the farther end of the oval, waiting 
with outstretched hand to snatch the torch from the first. 
The third ran in at the beginning, and so on. And when 
those fading laurel crowns were bestowed upon the victors 
that were the token of an unfading immortality they were 
given not to the men who first brought home the torches 
still lighted, but to all six of the city that won. For the 
first as well as the last, and the third as well as the fifth, 
deserved a crown. Had a single one broken training, did 
any drop the torch and extinguish it, did one falter, the 
race was lost. 

As I write, there is standing in the trenches of central 
Europe a great host of the men of our Motherland. Be- 
hind them are the graves of the dead and the land of their 
loyalty. Before them are the enemy, and, still beyond, un- 
seen, the destinies of those who are to come. The Eng- 
lish call them their " thin red line of heroes." Such are 
we. For if men for a single generation should forsake let- 
ters those to come would never know how to read. If we 
should forget neighborliness those to come would squabble 
like cave-men. If we should forget pure living those to 
come would live like beasts. 

So stand we in the midst of the Torch-Race of eternity. 
Behind us on the nearer slopes of the Stadium are the vet- 
eran torch-bearers, our fathers and mothers, next the pio- 
neers, the cavaliers and crusaders, the men of iron, the bar- 
barians, even the cave-men. Before us in the dim distance 
are those yet unborn, leaning forward expectant, urging us 
to run with patience and with care, for there is no light that 
can reach them except that which is handed forward by us. 



394 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

There is an old motto that has come down in the Greek 
tongue from their Torch-Race : 

" Let true hands pass on 
An unextinguished torch from sire to son." 

Our brilliant modern essayist has made it his own aspira- 
tion. " Life is no brief candle to me/' said Bernard Shaw 
once. " It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold 
of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as 
possible before handing it on to future generations." 



XLIX 
" THE GANG " 

THE games of little children are individual. It is each 
fellow for himself, with the hoops and marbles, in the 
foot-race and even in baseball. But the games of youth 
are social. Team-play is now the word. And so boys in 
baseball make " sacrifice hits " and in football engage in 
" mass play," to give victory to the nine or eleven, regard- 
less of themselves. 

This is a picture of what has now come to be, namely, the 
ability to work together, to have real friendships. The 
" gangs," " sets " and other social groups, including high- 
school fraternities, that young people organize, do not begin 
before ten, becomes numerous before twelve or last much 
after seventeen. So the high-school age has often been 
known as " gang-period," meaning the period when, as the 
Scotch say, young folk " gang thegither." 

You know how enthusiastic these friendships often are. 
What one does all do. You would hardly do what your 
crowd disapproves if you can help it, just as you would not 
commit a crime. The Crowd is Public Opinion. What 
" all the fellers do " is much more important to you than it 
seems to be to your father and mother. And as for out- 
siders, they may be just as smart, as well-off, as kindly, as 
good-looking as you who are inside, but as for you they 
hardly exist. They are " stiffs " and " muckers." Perhaps 
you go even farther. It may be that, to chosen ones of the 

395 



396 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

inner circle, you bare your inmost soul and tell secrets which 
you wish afterward you had kept to yourself. Perhaps 
even your conscience is~ for a while in the custody of the 
crowd, and whatever they think is right. 

Still, at bottom, this instinct to get together is fine. It 
is really the friendship-making instinct, and you will not 
make as many good friends in a year when you are thirty as 
you may make now in a week. Unless you know how to be 
a friend you can never know how to pull together with 
others in a larger way, and I am convinced that no boy or 
girl will ever be a good neighbor, a generous citizen, a true 
patriot, when he grows up unless he has been a member of 
a gang when he was young. 

William James once said that the principal aim of a col- 
lege education was " to help you know a good man when 
you see one." Isn't that one of the things we begin to 
learn out of our high-school friendships? 

There is, I think, one unfortunate difference between 
the friendship of boys and those of girls. Boys get out 
into active games, while girls of the same age, who surely 
need physical activity just as much, tend to meet quietly 
with each other in the house for sewing, self-improvement 
and gossip. Where girls have learned to play basketball 
and volley-ball together they seem to join in just as heart- 
ily and to enjoy themselves just as much as boys do. Many 
believe that girls' friendships would be much more sincere 
and permanent if they had more of this lively give-and-take 
that boys have in games. 

Although for a time you do just what your crowd does, 
by and by you begin to have a will of your own, and then 
you commence to outgrow the " gang." This is the time 
when special friendships come, when two who have discov- 




^ PQ 
o W 



"THE GANG" 397 

ered that they have much in common that the rest do not 
have become chums. Ah, those are the rarest of all friend- 
ships! It is now that one can appreciate that fine defini- 
tion of a friend ; " A friend is a fellow who knows all 
about you, but likes you." Now one is ready to do a serv- 
ice for one of whom he is fond without always having to 
count whether he gets it exactly all back. This is the " joy 
of service " of which the ritual of the Camp Fire Girls 
speaks, " so deep that self is forgotten." 

SCHOOL SPIRIT 

Not long ago an Amherst College freshman had his leg 
broken at football practice. As they carried him off the 
field his single exclamation was, " How thankful I am that 
it was not a member of the first team ! " 

This illustration of the instinct the college student has to 
think of others is matched by another one which came to my 
notice lately. Three college students had run off with a 
hand-car and had been arrested in an adjoining town. It 
was a harmless though foolish prank and it came to noth- 
ing. But before they were released their friends went 
around college — and it is a college of poor men — and 
collected three hundred dollars,, all the cash there was in 
sight, to help bail them out. The majority of those who 
made the loan had no personal acquaintance with the stu- 
dents who were in trouble, but they sacrificed without a 
question. 

A striking instance of personal devotion is that which 
came to my knowledge not long since, concerning two col- 
ored girls who entered Oberlin College, very poor, and ar- 
ranged to share their poverty or prosperity alike. One of 
them fell sick and developed tuberculosis and the other left 



398 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

college, entered domestic service and supported and cared 
for her friend till she died. When I knew her she was still 
doing housework, and had accumulated money enough to be- 
come a student again. But there was a fear that she had 
taken the dread disease by ministering to her chum. 

Much is said to-day about the idlness and self-indulgence 
of college fraternities. In no institution has the fraternity 
system developed more elaborately than at Cornell Uni- 
versity. But eleven years ago a heroic display of self -for- 
get fulness occurred there which seemed to show how in- 
stinctively the brotherhood for which the fraternity is sup- 
posed to stand manifests itself. The occasion itself was 
one to tempt forth whatever of cowardice or selfishness was 
latent in the men concerned. On a bitter cold and windy 
night in the winter of 1906 fire broke out in the Chi Psi 
chapter-house, located on the bleak top of the hill where 
Cornell's campus lies. The flames almost instantly rushed 
up the one central highway, cutting off at once an easy es- 
cape. Twenty-six young men were on the third floor asleep, 
and they were awakened individually in an extemporaneous 
fashion by those who were aroused first. The only way out 
was along the icy ledges and eaves, with a long drop to the 
ground in the darkness. The fire department did not ar- 
rive until too late. At no time is a man less prepared to be 
unselfish than when he is awakened suddenly. Yet every 
man's first thought was for his chum or friend. Several 
lost their lives in arousing or searching for their companions. 
Some were horribly burned in trying to do so, and later, 
suffering terrible agony, spoke only of those who were dead. 
Not one who was thus unexpectedly summoned to show 
himself a man failed to do so. Out of an average group of 
college fellows every one was a hero. 



" THE GANG " 399 

If, as some one has said, education is friends learning 
happiness together, is not a college education worth while 
if it can give you friendships like these? 

" We'll honor yet the School we knew, 

The best School of all : 
We'll honor yet the rule we knew, 

Till the last bell call. 
For, working days or holidays, 
And glad or melancholy days, 
They were great days and jolly days 

At the best School of all. 

"To speak of Fame a venture is, 

There's little here can bide, 
But we may face the centuries, 

And dare the deepening tide : 
For though the dust that's part of us 

To dust again be gone, 
Yet here shall beat the heart of us — 

The School we handed on ! " 



THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES 

IT is most interesting to find out how, in every land and 
age, wise men have so much appreciated the importance 
of the period through which you are now passing that they 
have devised ceremonies for boys and girls marking their 
initiation into manhood. With some of these you are famil- 
iar : confirmation in churches, " the freeman's oath " in 
New England, civic and patriotic festivals in various coun- 
tries. 

Of those adopted in earlier times it is even more fas- 
cinating to read. Among the Metlakahtlan Indians the 
girls at about thirteen are put into isolated cabins where no 
one is allowed to see them. They are supposed to be away 
on a journey to the moon or some other celestial place and 
at the end of a month they return to their people amid 
great feasting and rejoicing. The boy among the Omahas 
was taught the tribal prayer, which he was to sing during 
four days and nights of his vigil in some lonely place. 
Bows and arrows were placed in his hand, but, to teach 
him self-control, he was enjoined not to use them, no mat- 
ter how great the need might be. He was bidden to weep 
while he sang his prayer, and to lift up his wet hands 
unto heaven and to lay them on the earth. The purpose of 
his prayer and crying was to help him receive a vision from 
on high of what he was to do in the world. Among the 
Bechuanas of Africa it is the custom for the men to scourge 

400 



THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES 401 

the boys, while demanding, " Will you guard the cattle 
well? " The boys dance and look happy through it all, and 
must not wince at the blows. Then they are " taken in the 
woods by the old men for some time. What takes place is 
unknown, but they come back lean and scarred, and are 
henceforth comrades and address each other by a new 
familiar name." 

In Athens at eighteen the boys took the civic oath to bear 
arms for the fatherland. This oath was a splendid one: 
" I will never bring disgrace to these arms, nor desert the 
man next me in the ranks, but I will fight for the sanctities 
and the common good, both alone and with others. I will 
not leave the fatherland diminished, but greater and better 
(by sea and land) than I received it. I will listen to those 
always who have the power of decision, and obey existing 
laws and all others which the people shall agree in ordain- 
ing; and if any one would nullify or refuse to obey them, I 
will not permit it, but will defend them, whether alone or 
with others. I will honor the religion of my fatherland. 
Witness the gods." This oath was taken in a sacred forest, 
and after it was received the young men became watchmen, 
were guardians of the sacred mountains and national treas- 
ures, and did much duty in the night and on distant jour- 
neys. 

Most interesting were the ceremonies connected with 
medieval knighthood. Until fourteen a lad's duty was to 
attend the ladies, as the brother does the sister in our frontis- 
piece. Thus he learned love, honor, bravery and gallantry. 
He was made a squire at fourteen, when he went, as the 
youth in Mrs. Stephens' painting is just about to do, to the 
castle of a lord, to attend him and learn knightly duties. 
At twenty-one, after seven years of such training, he was 



402 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

made a knight with solemn observances. A day and a night 
were spent in fasting, prayer, confession and watching. 
This watching was in the solitary church, where surrounded 
by the graves of the mighty dead and the windows that 
pictured the lives of the glorified saints he was reminded of 
death and of honor. Then in the morning after a bath the 
youth was dressed in new white robes, over his coat of mail. 
The Holy Sacrament was given and he was examined by the 
priest. If he was found worthy he knelt again before the 
altar and took vows to be " a brave, loyal, generous, just and 
gentle knight, a champion of the Church, a redressor of the 
wrongs of widows and orphans and a protector of ladies." 
The priest then hung his sword, after blessing it, about his 
neck. His spear, his helmet, his shield, and his spurs were 
given him. Lastly, the prince or king smote him on the 
neck with the flat of his sword, as the emblem that this 
should be the last affront he should bear unavenged, and 
said : " In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I 
make thee a knight ; be valiant, courteous and loyal. ,, 

For ladies there was no such ceremonial. Girls were 
trained in housewifely arts, they had falconry and a rude 
sort of tennis for their sports, they managed the affairs of 
the castle, but as women it was their place to be protected 
and honored by the men, they were the bestowers of praise 
at tourneys, they rewarded the noblest with their smiles or 
their hands, they were the generous benefactors of the 
poor and the nurses of the suffering. In the crusades they 
rode with their knights or prayed for them in the churches 
at home during their absence. 

But both, knights and ladies, knew from boyhood and 
girlhood what chivalry meant, and they stepped across the 
threshold of maturity soberly, intelligently and joyously. 



THE EDUCATION OF PRINCES 403 

KNIGHTS OF TO-DAY 

A fascinating revival of this idea of initiating boys and 
girls into manhood and womanhood has been in existence in 
the world for about twenty-five years, in what is known as 
the Knights of King Arthur movement. It is a fraternity of 
boys of high-school age (and there is a similar society of 
girls, called the Queens of Avalon) organized mostly in con- 
nection with churches of every denomination, and in every 
English-speaking country. 

King Arthur, the first king who united England, when he 
departed to the island of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, 
prophesied that he should return again, to set up a better 
kingdom. In the Order of the Knights of King Arthur 
boys play that he has come back again, to make a kingdom 
of gentlemen in the midst of the great Republic. They 
themselves are his knights, and they take the traditional 
knightly names or the names of heroes of all ages. They 
sit, as his knights did, about a Table Round ; they have their 
initiations funny and solemn, and they confer the rank of 
kmghthood in a ceremonial of appealing beauty; they hold 
athletic " tournaments," they have occasions of jolly " was- 
sail," and they go out together on -generous " quests." 
Some of them devise fine uniforms or coats of mail, or 
adopt coats of arms or banners, or make themselves swords. 
What they do together is a small part, for each boy takes 
the idea home with him and tries to realize what it means 
to be a modern knight in his daily life. His motto is: 
" My Sword Shall Be Bathed in Heaven," and for his 
flower he takes the fleur de lis, v the flower of chivalry — 
" with a sword for its leaf, and a lily for its heart." 

The girls make believe that they are the queens who lived 



4 o 4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

on the fairy isle of Avalon, who used to minister to wounded 
heroes and whose land had perpetual summer and gladness. 
They too take queenly names and have their pretty cere- 
monies. They try to make housewifely tasks beautiful and 
ministrations lovely, and their flower is the apple blossom, 
because Avalon means " the isle of apples," and because the 
apple blossom in its beauty, use and fragrance is the parable 
of womanhood. 

I describe these because, as you see, they are our present 
ways of doing what our wise fathers did. They help a boy 
or girl to come to himself. Aside from the fun and the 
fellowship, he goes home and considers what these legends 
and ceremonies mean, and what it means to become the 
truest type of man or woman. And they do him a high 
service also, because they give things their right names. 

Have you ever thought how much mischief comes when 
things are not named aright? Shakespeare said, "A rose 
by any other name would smell as sweet." Maybe it would, 
but the same is not true of everything else. When on the 
street you hear debilitating habits styled manliness, and im- 
purity spoken of as romance, or fraud called smartness, you 
need a wholesome corrective somewhere. The Knights of 
King Arthur call a spade a spade, and a sneak a sneak, 
whether he tries to steal virtue from a woman or money 
from a town, and it sets up standards so clean and strong 
that the finest fellows are mighty glad to have a chance to 
rally round them. Yet it does so without preaching or 
pretense, and makes goodness both manly and enjoyable. 



LI 

A STAR FOR YOUR WAGON 

MARGARET SLATTERY was sitting by the ocean 
one day when she found herself drawn to watch a 
young man at work in the sand. I find this story of her 
experience in the pages of the Wellspring. 

" He is carving in the moist sand the Lion of Lucerne. 
I am much interested in watching him work. 

" I noticed how carefully he moistened the sand and meas- 
ured out on the beach the space for the picture to occupy. 
Then I saw him smooth down his great mound of sand and 
make in it the frame for his picture. The smooth mound 
of sand, perhaps fifteen feet long, looks like a great empty 
picture- frame filled with a blank canvas. But now the 
artist begins to draw lines and the shield and the lion ap- 
pear in outline. A crowd of people have gathered by this 
time and leaning over the railing, watch him with great 
interest as he takes from his bag a picture of ' The Lion of 
Lucerne ' and a plaster model. He pays no attention, how- 
ever, to the crowd. Keeping his eyes fixed on the picture 
and the model, he works rapidly. Soon the great head 
and shaggy mane appear ; then little by little the huge body 
with its graceful lines and curves stands out in the frame. 

" But the sun is setting, a strong wind comes in from the 
sea, and the artist and spectators go back to the hotels. 

" Now it is Saturday morning and I have come down to 
the shore to continue to watch the young artist at work. 

405 



406 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS, 

He has nearly completed his task, and is working as he did 
yesterday, unconscious of the crowd, studying carefully the 
model and the picture as he works. 

" This morning a few feet away from the artist and his 
wonderful sand carving, a boy of about twelve years is also 
hard at work. Every now and then he goes over to look at 
the lion and then returns to his own mound to outline it 
there. The people who are watching laugh again and again 
at his attempts but he pays no attention. The artist is copy- 
ing the picture and the model, and the boy in turn is copy- 
ing the artist's work. 

" I walked away up the miles of boardwalk thinking as I 
walked of that great ' Lion of Lucerne ' far across the sea 
by the blue lake in Switzerland. It is marvelously carved 
in the solid rock with every detail clear, the Bourbon lily 
held tightly under the great paw, the shield, the lance in the 
side that meant death, and the inscription ascribing honor to 
the brave Swiss guard that stood to the last defending the 
French king in the Tuileries after his own soldiers had fled. 
I remembered that the magnificent lion carved there in the 
rocks is a copy of the original model carefully guarded in 
a house by the lake. The model is the work of the great 
sculptor Thorwaldsen, and every line in the huge lion's 
body, the look of pain upon his face, the broken lance, the 
lily, the shield, seem in that original model absolutely real. 
The sculptor felt all the courage and bravery of the splendid 
guard that died on duty and made his lion tell it all. 

" When I return from my walk the sand artist has com- 
pleted his work, and it is exceedingly well done. He stands 
beside it leaning on his shovel. A piece of canvas spread 
out before the carving in the sand says that the young man 
needs money to help him in getting an education in art and 



A STAR FOR YOUR WAGON 407 

the people as they pass stop to admire his work and toss 
down a dime, a quarter, sometimes even a half-dollar or 
more to help him out. Then they laugh again good- 
naturedly as they look down at the other, younger boy, rest- 
ing near by on his shovel. His lion is also completed. It 
is one of the strangest lions I have ever seen and unless it 
were labeled I fear no one would recognize it. But an oc- 
casional cent or nickel finds its way to his large white cot- 
ton handkerchief, spread carefully out on the sand with 
stones at the corners to hold it down. 

" Again I remembered the great Lion at Lucerne and 
thought how many thousands of copies of it have been made, 
copies in bronze and marble, in wood and plaster, and into 
how many places these copies have gone with their message 
of steadfast, faithful loyalty. 

" It makes a tremendous difference what one decides to 
copy in life, and I am glad the young artist chose the brave 
man and his horse and the Lion of Lucerne to work out in 
the sand. Some of the artists in sand along the board-walk 
chose entirely different subjects, grinning Billikens, men 
smoking long pipes, silly dancing girls and a score of other 
things. And though the crowd laughed at some of the 
others and called them clever, they dropped their money 
before the ' Lion of Lucerne.' 

" It makes a tremendous difference what one decides to 
copy in life." 

HOW TO IMITATE 

Sam Walter Foss used to tell about a calf, who " through 
the primeval wood walked home as good calves should." 
He made a crooked trail, which was followed in turn by a 
lone dog, a wise bell-wether sheep, a flock, and the people 



4 o8 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

who passed that way. By successive treadings this path 
became a lane, a road and a village street, and finally a city's 
crowded thoroughfare. So 

" A hundred thousand men were led 
By one calf near three centuries dead . . . 
For men are prone to go it blind 
Along the calf-paths of the mind. ,, 

A schoolgirl once had such an admiration for a certain 
teacher that she imitated her faithfully in everything. 
Many years later she was unable to cure herself of a curious, 
mincing step that she had cultivated when a child because 
it was her teacher's manner of walking. 

To copy every outer trick or mannerism of another will 
not make one really like the other, but it may interfere with 
being one's self. It is worth while to imitate other people, 
many others, not only one, so that you may build into the 
house of your life as many beautiful stones as possible. 
President Wilson once remarked in a characteristic epigram, 
" Men I consult with know more than I do — if I consult 
with enough of them." The greatness of Mr. Wilson or of 
any other man may be measured by the number of great ex- 
amples he has imitated. 

The way to do this is not by watching their ways so 
much as by studying their impulses and motives, and know- 
ing the secret of their inner life. Two architects conceived 
an admiration for ancient Greek buildings. One brought to 
the house he was erecting stones from Grecian ruins and 
marble benches and fountains from Grecian cities. The 
other tried to find out what were the ideals of the Greek 
builders and what they tried to express. The first simply 
filled a modern house with sculptures that were out of place. 




£ 3 



= £ 



A STAR FOR YOUR WAGON 409 

The other built a harmonious home inspired by the spirit of 
the noblest builders of all time, yet filled with an individual 
charm from his own creative nature. That was the finer 
kind of imitation. 

In all times the strongest force toward the emulation of 
virtue and valor has been the knowledge of men of achieve- 
ment that has come through books. I remember trying 
long^to prove to a hard-headed old fellow now long ago that 
Samuel Smiles' " Self Help " was not the greatest book ever 
written. I did not succeed very well, perhaps because I had 
never read it myself. But he would keep coming back to 
this argument : " You may laugh at the book all you like, 
call it old-fashioned and stiff and all that; nevertheless all I 
am in this world I owe to Smiles' ' Self Help.' " What 
could I say against that ? It had stimulated him to the re- 
solve that George E. Woodberry once put into verse : 

" And the highest on earth was the vow that we cherished, 
To spurn from the crowd and come back nevermore, 
And to ride in the track of the great souls perished 
Till the nests of the lark shall roof us o'er." 

Swift questioned 255 boys in a Wisconsin reformatory 
and learned that only 24 of them had read any books that 
were not harmful, and many' of these were valueless. 
Thirty-five had read no books at all, and 12 said they 
had read some good books, but were not able to name any. 
Most of the books read were crime and detective stories. 
Of these boys 54 had never seen or heard of any one whom 
they greatly admired, 28 admired Washington as their 
nearest hero, and 48 were unable to name any one in par- 
ticular. No boy who had done any good reading would 
have given these answers. 



410 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

There are two reasons why it is undesirable to read about 
an unworthy hero. The first is that the persons of whom 
we read are our companions and it is just as injurious to 
welcome a bad comrade to our minds as it is to our homes ; 
and the second is that since whenever we start a book we 
tend to think of ourselves as being the hero, his deeds our 
deeds, his ideals our ideals, so if the hero is not worthy 
we ourselves tend, at least in imagination, to be like him. 
If a fellow must get poisoned, why take it sitting in a chair? 

Who, on the other hand, can measure the influence that 
comes from having lived for years imaginatively in the 
company of the great and good in books? Therefore, as 
Emily Dickinson said : 

" Read how others strove, 

Till we are stouter; 
What they renounced, 

Till we are less afraid; 
How many times they bore 

The faithful witness, 
Till we are helped 

As if a kingdom cared: — 
Brave names of men 

And celestial women 
Passed out of record 

Into renown." 



LII 

THE CHEER-MASTER 

ONE of the most sought- for and popular positions in 
the athletic life of a college is taken by a student who 
plays no games, undergoes no coaching and wears no uni- 
form or letter. Yet he is regarded as so important a part- 
ner in every victory that he is taken wherever the team goes. 
He is called the cheer-master. He cannot play, but he or- 
ganizes the audience in favor of the players. He yells not 
only for victors but for those who struggle and he never 
cheers so vigorously as in the face of apparent defeat. 

It is possible even for a player to show some of the quality 
of a cheer-master. A certain coach was working up two 
players, Wei ford and Reddy, who were so nearly even that 
it was hard to say which was the better man. Finally, he 
said, " I began to watch now so much the players, as to what 
the effect on the other members of the team was, when 
quickly I discovered that every time I took Reddy out and 
put Welford in, every man on that team took a brace. An 
air of ' now-let's-get-busy ' settled over the boys. Why 
Welford has that effect, the Lord only knows — I don't; 
but I know it's there." One man spoiled team-play, the 
other made it. 

OTHER CHEER-MASTERS 

" What is the best thing you remember about your 
mother?" said one eminent writer to his friend who was 
equally eminent. 

411 



4 i2 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" She was always so ready to listen," was his answer. 

Then he continued : " There were a lot of us children 
and she was a busy woman. But she always took time to 
give encouragement. She heard all about our adventures 
in school and all our troubles out of school. If we had 
learned a recitation or a new piece on the piano she would 
sit down and hear it through. When I began to think I 
wanted to be a writer, I brought all my crude productions to 
her. I am glad to say that she did not often praise them, 
for she was a shrewd and honest critic, but she always heard 
them. I cannot remember ever coming to my mother that 
she did not smile and relax in her work and get ready for 
whatever I had to bring. 

" It was the same way everywhere. The minister was 
glad to have her in his audience, for he said he was always 
sure of one alert face. At a concert the musicians seemed 
to play in her direction. In her social circle she was most 
popular, for while she did not say a great deal, as one of 
her best friends said, she was the most eloquent listener he 
ever saw. Not me only did her appreciation inspire, but I 
am sure it brought out latent talent in many others. Young 
people learned to believe in themselves because she believed 
in them. And I know personally that some very shy and 
humble people owe their success to-day to her encourage- 
ment." 

My friend Paul Voelker is now the head of the Chau- 
tauqua movement that is being conducted by the University 
of Wisconsin. One summer, when he was in charge of an- 
other Chautauqua circuit, he came to a conservative New 
Hampshire town to act as platform superintendent. On 
the first day the audience did not warm up as he thought 
they ought. He gave them a good talking to ; he told them 



THE CHEER-MASTER 413 

that the concert companies and lecturers never did so well 
as when they were applauded heartily; that if they wanted 
to get the best out of their Chautauqua they must act ap- 
preciative, and that if they really wanted to have a good 
time they must " loosen up " as he expressed it. He showed 
them how to loosen up. He told the boys how to curve 
their hands to make the most noise, he taught them all the 
Chautauqua salute, I think he invented a yell and encour- 
aged them to give it on the spot. The people acted uneasy 
and did not seem to approve. The next day the local paper 
said " that might go in the breezy Middle West, but it 
wouldn't do for New England." Still the second night there 
was a little more applause, and the night following there 
was much more, and before long the folks began to act as 
if they enjoyed making a noise. All the time Voelker was 
smiling and encouraging them on. The talent were saying 
to him each day : " What is the matter, Voelker ? Why, 
we haven't sung and spoken as well this summer as we have 
here." " Just encouragement," was Voelker's explana- 
tion. When the last evening came Voelker outdid himself 
in leading the applause, and after the program was over the 
people remained to cheer everybody and everything in sight. 
At length a man with iron-gray hair who could stand it no 
longer sprang to the front seat and led them all in three 
cheers for Paul Voelker! It was the editor who had said 
that this sort of thing wouldn't go in New England ! 

MAC AT THE BACK 

Here is a good story that I found the other day in a Cana- 
dian periodical. 

A college man was one day visiting a Sunday school class 
of young fellows who were being taught by his old college 



4 i4 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

chum. " Who is that fellow on the back seat? " he asked 
on the way home. " He didn't say very much, and he 
spoke rather slowly, but I could not help feeling there was a 
good deal of solid weight behind his words, and his offer 
to subscribe the first five dollars certainly went a long way 
towards carrying the motion. Who is the fellow, any- 
way?" 

" Why, that was Donald Mackinnon. Rather a queer 
chap, but he is the backbone of the Class. ' Mac at the 
Back/ the fellows call him, because he always sits at the 
back of the Class. There is another reason, too, for the 
name. While he is too modest and unassuming ever to 
take the lead in anything the Class does, he always puts his 
whole weight behind any job it undertakes. We have found 
out it is no use asking him to take any office; but we have 
also discovered that he is a man behind all the committees." 

" An unusual member, surely," Henderson observed. 
" Has he been in your Class long? " 

" Yes, he is one of the old members. I'll never forget 
the first time he came to the Class. His father, a hot- 
headed and rather turbulent farmer, was killed in a runaway 
a few years ago. Don, a shy, awkward boy of about fifteen 
at that time, was left to take care of his mother, young 
brother and sister, and the farm. He said very little about 
his father's death, but it had a great effect on him. He 
seemed to grow into a man almost over night. 

" I went out to see him after the funeral. He said very 
little, but seemed quite appreciative of what I tried to do. 

" He came next Sunday and every following Sunday. 
He was never late and yet never ahead of time, and he al- 
ways dropped into the seat at the back, near the door. He 



THE CHEER-MASTER 415 

still had very little to say, but I observed that he seemed to 
become less anxious to avoid meeting fellows and not quite 
so keen to get away at the close. 

" One day I had a surprise. We were taking up a Tem- 
perance Lesson, and I asked a question about the effect of 
alcohol on the brain, which a good high-school student might 
be expected to know. Nobody seemed to have any answer, 
however, until the silence was broken by a deep voice from 
the rear, which, in slow, deliberate tones, gave out facts 
which showed no superficial information on the subject. 
Everybody turned around. No wonder; it was the first 
time Mac had ever spoken in the class. 

" A little while later I received another surprise. I was 
asking, in the Class, if any one knew anything about a cer- 
tain young fellow who had recently come to the town from 
the States, and who had been missing the last couple of Sun- 
days. No one had anything to report, until finally Mac got 
up and quietly announced that he had been at Stewzel's 
room a few nights before, having heard that he had re- 
ceived some bad news. He said that Stewzel had had to 
leave for a few days, but that he would be back with the 
Class all right next Sunday. Those were all the particulars 
he gave out, and I don't know the whole story even now, 
but I learned sufficient to know that Mac had helped the 
American in a very distressful situation, and I could tell you 
a good many other instances where, in his quiet, almost mys- 
terious way, he finds out about fellows and helps them, al- 
though he is on no Membership Committee. 

" I've never known him to make a motion, nor ever start 
anything himself in the Class, but when a thing begins to 
lag or look like a fall down, you're sure to find Mac's weight 



416 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

coming somewhere from behind. He doesn't do any ex- 
horting, but he just does something that makes the rest of 
us feel ashamed. 

" For instance, one winter several members of the Class 
agreed to act as Big Brothers to a number of young lads in 
the town who were giving a good deal of trouble to their 
parents and the community. Our fellows were very keen 
at first ; they had the boys up in the Class room a couple of 
times for social evenings and started a Boys' Hockey 
League. But some found themselves too busy, or the boys 
too troublesome, and one after another they began to lie 
down on the job. 

" One night, however, as one of the original Big Brothers 
was going home from the rink with a girl friend, a sleigh- 
load of crazy, yelling youngsters dashed past him, just giv- 
ing him time to observe that the driver was Mac. The 
next Saturday the Class president, passing by the river, 
found a furious juvenile hockey match going on, with old 
Mac following the players back and forth in the double 
capacity of referee and mutual coach. There was some 
quiet talking around the Class next Sunday, and somehow 
the Big Brother work seemed to revive." 

" Say, Grant," suddenly broke in the missionary, " isn't 
that your Mac coming out of that little house ahead there, 
with that youngster dancing beside him? " 

" Sure enough, that's ' Mac at the back ' taking that young 
scapegrace, Charlie Tisdale, out to the farm with him for 
supper." 

" Well, Grant, it's a fine thing to be a leader and en- 
thusiast, but here's to the man at the back. It's too bad to 
be backward, but it's a great thing to be a backer." 

If all the truth were told, more would be said in biography 



THE CHEER-MASTER 417 

about those junior partners who have been cheer-masters to 
the great. " The time is coming," says Robert Haven 
Schauffler, " when music-lovers will never make a pil- 
grimage to the resting-place of Wagner without making 
another to the grave of Mathilde Wesedonk, whose ' vir- 
tue ' breathed into ' Tristan and Isolde ' the breath of life. 
We shall not much longer neglect the tomb of Charles Dar- 
win's father, who by making the evolutionist financially in- 
dependent, gave his services to the world. I have no doubt 
that Charles Eliot Norton was the silent partner of Carlyle, 
Ruskin, and Lowell ; Sainte Clare of Francis of Assisi, and 
Dorothy Wordsworth of William. Sir Humphrey Davy 
rescued Faraday from the book-binder's bench and poured 
out the overplus of his own creative energy upon the youth 
who has recently been called ' perhaps the most remarkable 
discoverer of the nineteenth century.' Who was Lincoln's 
silent partner ? Who were the secret commanders of Grant, 
Wellington, and Caesar? Who was the conductor of the 
orchestra called Beethoven? the psychic comrade of Colum- 
bus?" 

Cheering is one of the best parts of living. Perhaps you 
lament that you are not a brilliant talker or worker. But 
while there is one kind of joy in being in a procession, there 
is another, and a good kind, in cheering as it goes by. The 
spectator sees it all, while the marcher sees only a part of 
it. There is a thrill in being a performer, but there is also 
a thrill in being an audience. More than this, there is a 
great service to be rendered by listeners in helping those who 
perform. The audience makes the singer or player or 
speaker. Mr. Schauffler calls such listeners " geniuses by 
proxy," and he says we cannot have great arts without them. 
Those for whom I have contempt are they who will neither 



418 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

perform nor listen, or at least who will not listen until 
everybody else applauds. They have no use, as some one 
has said, for " unticketed eminence." Think how many 
great masters have waited, some of them till death, for 
recognition. Why be the last to recognize greatness? 
Would it not have been almost as good as to be John Keats 
to have known him and hailed him as a master of song while 
he was dying of discouragement? Would you not have 
liked to have been the discoverer of Millet or of Corot? 
Don't wait for a tag before you praise a good man. No 
matter if occasionally you do give a cheer at the wrong 
place. The world will at least be glad to remember that 
you were a great cheer-master. 

GO BACK AND DO IT 

Yesterday morning an old, beggarly-looking man was 
standing beside the stairway that led to an elevated railroad 
station, seemingly bewildered. I was in a hurry, and did 
not ask him where he wanted to go. Why didn't I go back 
and do it? 

There is a flagman who always touches his hat to me 
every day when I cross the track beside his little, ivy-cov- 
ered hut. Yesterday I did not see him until I had passed 
and I did not respond to his friendly greeting. Why didn't 
I go back and do it? 

A workingman did me a kindness the other day. He 
promised to hail a milkman and tell him to stop at my 
house. He remembered and did so, but the next evening 
when I met him I forgot to thank him. Why didn't I go 
back and do it? 

My mother used to take great pains to think of lovely 
little surprises for me, and I used to take them as a matter 



THE CHEER-MASTER 419 

of course. I see now how happy she could have been if I 
had ever thanked her. It is too late for me now to go back 
and do it. 

I had a schoolmaster in a country school who fitted me 
for college more thoroughly than many a boy is fitted in a 
larger and more famous school. Often when I was in col- 
lege I had good reason to thank him for his patience with 
me, but I never did. And it is now too late for me to go 
back and do it. 

My chum did more for me than anybody else when I was 
a student. He was so honest and genuine and sensible, and 
so full of fine manly purposes, and I was so much younger 
than he and needed him so much. Every day of my life I 
am thankful for him and I often tell others what he did for 
me, but I never told him. And now it is too late for me 
to go back and do it. 

To-morrow somebody else will do me a kindness. I shall 
be hurried and forgetful, but perhaps the memory of some 
kindness done by those of the past may make me willing to 
pass them on to those who are to come. And even if I 
hurry by, and feel timid about opening my heart by saying 
an appreciative word, still I can go back and do it. 

To-morrow somebody else will wave a hand to me or 
speak friendly about the weather in passing. Perhaps I 
shall remember that I shall not forever walk this friendly 
road and that the number who wave to me is not unlimited. 
Even if I have passed them by without giving a sign of 
brotherhood, perhaps because they are poor or humble or be- 
cause I myself am shy, still I can go back and do it. 

I have yet some friends who mean more to me than any 
friends I have ever had. They are close to me, and some 
of them are in the house where I live. I shudder to think 



420 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that I might die or they might die before I have said to 
them all that is in my heart. I haven't done it yet, but, 
thank God, I can still go back and do it. 



LIII 
THE HAPPY WAY OF DOING THINGS 

AKIN to appreciation is courtesy. 
I have known boys and girls to object to courtesy as 
if it were necessarily insincere. Sometimes it is. 

" The idea of calling this the Wild West ! Why I never 
saw such politeness anywhere," said an Englishwoman 
traveling in Montana. " The men here all treat each other 
like gentlemen in a drawing-room." 

" Yes, marm," said the native with a glance at his six- 
shooter. " It's safer." 

But isn't courtesy worth something even if it does noth- 
ing more than make life safer and easier? "Manners," 
Emerson said, " are just the happy ways of doing things." 
One is reminded of th& Englishwoman who once said to the 
artist, Whistler, that the politeness of the French was " all 
on the surface," to which he made the quick reply: " And 
a very good place for it to be." 

It was said of Robert Browning that though he only met 
you in a crowd and made some commonplace remark, you 
went for the rest of the day with your head up. 

So sunny of spirit was Louis Agassiz that Oliver Wendell 
Holmes used to say that " one has less need of an overcoat 
in passing Agassiz' s house." Such a man is, as Walt Whit- 
man said, a " persuader always of people to give him their 
sweetest touches, and never their meanest." 

To those who object to courtesy because it involves ob- 

421 



422 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

scuring part of the truth the question may be asked whether 
we who are discourteous ever manage to tell the whole of 
the truth. And we may agree with Minnie D. Kellogg that 
"Certainly one-half of the truth is as true as the other — 
and it may be infinitely pleasanter." 

Some peoples are more gracious than we in expressing 
thanks for the common gifts of life. In Japan, at a beau- 
tiful cataract, those who come are called " guests of the 
waterfall," and those who live there treat them kindly and 
expect from them words of acknowledgment, spoken to the 
waterfall itself. 

In Macedonia the traveler will often see fountains deco- 
rated with cotton or wool threads of many colors. These 
threads are torn from their garments by wayfarers when 
they behold the fountain for the first time. After they have 
slaked their thirst they leave these offerings as tokens of 
gratitude to the nymph of the fountain. 

You recall that after Robert Louis Stevenson had spent 
a magical night alone among the pines, he said he felt that 
he " was in some one's debt for all this liberal entertainment. 
I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in 
my green caravanserai. So it pleased me, in a half-laugh- 
ing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went 
along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging." 

I was brought up in a community where people tried to 
be fair but not gentle to each other. We never said any 
friendly or gracious things. As I grew up it was hard, 
even painful to do so. But as I have come to feel the keen 
pleasure that comes from receiving thought fulness and 
courtesy, I have tried to do the same myself, and I have be- 
gun to learn that there is no nicer luxury than practicing 
pleasant expressions. 



THE HAPPY WAY OF DOING THINGS 423 

What impression do you imagine you give in this respect, 
of being thoughtful enough to seem appreciative and ener- 
getic enough to be courteous? Do you suppose you would 
recognize yourself if you met yourself coming down the 
street ? Arnold Bennett puts it this way : " Has it ever 
struck you that there is a mysterious individual going 
around, walking the streets, calling at houses, chatting, 
laughing, grumbling, arguing, and that all your friends 
know him, and have long since added him up and come to a 
definite conclusion about him — without saying more than a 
chance, cautious word to you; and that that person is you? 
Supposing that you came into a drawing-room where you 
were having tea, do you think you would recognize your- 
self ? I think not. You would be apt to say to yourself, 
as guests do when disturbed in drawing-rooms by other 
guests : ' Who's this chap ? Seems rather queer. I hope 
he won't be a bore.' " How do you like the portrait ? 

It is generally only when we are caught in a piece of un- 
usual boorishness that we realize what hedgehogs we actu- 
ally are. Take " the things one would rather not have 
said." An afterthought has been defined as a mad desire 
to shut your mouth after you have put your foot in it. 
The man who makes such " breaks " is not intentionally 
discourteous. He has simply not taken the trouble to put 
himself in the other fellow's place. The old lady who went 
over to comfort her neighbor whose husband had hanged 
himself from the porch and who remarked as she passed out 
across the porch : " What a good place to hang things ! " 
did not mean any harm. She overlooked the fact that 
porches and hangings need not be mentioned in that house- 
hold for some time. 

I would put the art of courtesy in a good resolution : To- 



424 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

day I will try to say to every man I meet something that I 
think it would please him to hear, and, remembering where 
his sore corns are, I will remember not to tread on them. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR COURTESY 

Note. — Several of these are taken from a booklet called " School 
, Girl Ideals." 

May I know all the suggestions written in a book on manners 
and still be discourteous? 

Do I look cross when waiting for a package? 

Need I glare at my neighbor in the street car when he shoves 
me in the crowd? 

Do I scold " central " when she gives me the wrong number ? 

Do I thank the dressmaker for making me a becoming dress ? 

Does my chum enjoy being reminded that she is fat? 

Can I expect to remember to say the courteous thing always 
unless I practice at home? 

Don't the folks who get the least kindness deserve the most 
from me? 

Would I be more popular if I would think of the other fellow 
and not about myself when I am talking with him? 



LIV 
GREAT-HEART, GUIDE TO PILGRIMS 

ONE of the proudest traditions of the Y. M. C. A. Col- 
lege at Springfield is that upon its campus started the 
custom of giving the college cheer of one's opponents after 
the football game was over. Before that it had been usual 
either to give one's own cheer in derision over the defeated 
adversary or, if the game was lost, to walk in silence off the 
field. Now whether a college team wins or loses, it gives a 
cheer in tribute to its competitors. 

A boy who had been undecided as to whether to enter 
Princeton or another college chose in favor of Princeton 
after seeing them lose a great game on their home field. 
" If a college will cheer the fine plays of the team that is 
beating them as Princeton does, those are the fellows I 
want to belong with," he said in explanation. 

Such instances of magnanimity toward enemies are com- 
mon even in war. You have read how General U. S. Grant 
silenced the band that started to play " Hail to the Chief " 
in triumph while General Robert E. Lee was leaving the 
house where he had just surrendered and how he refused to 
enter Richmond after its capitulation, in deference to the 
feelings of his conquered countrymen. But did you know 
that when Lee's command marched down between two lines 
of Union soldiers, sobbing like children, they looked up 
along the silent blue lines and noted, to their surprise and 
comfort, that not only had they refrained from cheering but 

425 



426 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that the tears were rolling down the cheeks of their so-recent 
foes ? 

It is even harder to be great-hearted in defeat. One 
of the biographers of General Lee, J. William Jones, 'states 
that seeing the General one day talking at his gate with a 
stranger to whom, as he ended, he gave some money, he in- 
quired who the stranger was. " One of our old soldiers," 
said the General. " To whose command did he belong ? " 
" Oh, he was one of those who fought against us," said 
General Lee. " But we are all one now, and must make no 
difference in our treatment of them." Yet the man who 
thus spoke died unforgiven by his country, technically " a 
prisoner on parole." 

When Captain Robert Scott made his dash to the South 
Pole, it was a terrible disappointment to learn that Amund- 
sen, the Norwegian explorer, had arrived there a month 
earlier. But these chivalrous Englishmen proceeded to 
photograph Amundsen's tent with the Norwegian flag at the 
pole, thus giving to the world the record and conclusive 
proof of their rival's previous success. 

Hardest of all it is to be great-hearted when one has re- 
ceived an injury from a friend. We do not often think of 
gruff old half-sick Thomas Carlyle as chivalrous, especially 
toward his brilliant, spicy-tempered wife, but when his 
friend John Stuart Mill borrowed the manuscript of his 
French Revolution, upon which he had spent three years of 
his life, and he failed to take care of it and it was burned to 
ashes, Carlyle said not a word of reproach to him, but when 
he had gone he turned to his wife and said, " How miser- 
able Stuart Mill must be." 

Do you recall the remark made by Booker T. Washington, 
about the time when some prominent men were saying 



GREAT-HEART, GUIDE TO PILGRIMS 427 

coarsely that the Southern problem could not be settled " un- 
til a few thousand more niggers had been sent to hell " ? 
Mr. Washington's memorable reply was : " I will allow 
no man to degrade me by making me hate him/' 

It makes one's heart beat faster for one's race to learn of 
such great-heartedness. " Those are the fellows one wants 
to belong with." 

For what is the use of cherishing grudges against those 
who have offended us? When Charles the Fifth stood be- 
side the tomb of Luther at Wittenberg those about him sug- 
gested that the body of his enemy who had triumphed should 
be disinterred and burned at the stake in the market-place. 
" I war not with the dead," replied the chivalrous emperor 
with a shrug, as he turned away. 

Viscount Grey once said that he intended to spend his 
old age beside a river making bonfires of all the papers and 
pamphlets of his enemies, so as to mulch his rose-trees with 
their ashes! 

A happy thought, to raise flowers out of the ashes of old 
grudges. 

BIG IN LITTLE THINGS 

" Almost any one can be magnanimous in great affairs," 
Dr. S. M. Crothers reminds us, " but to be magnanimous in 
trifles is like trying to use a large screw-driver to turn a 
small screw." It would be easier, I suspect, to forgive an 
enemy in battle than a small brother who had unintention- 
ally spilled ink on one's best frock. It would seem hand- 
somer to share one's honors with a polar explorer than with 
a classmate who got his prize essay written for him by his 
mother. But I would not wish to be so little as to let an 
ink-spot stain all my kindliness or a stolen prize steal my 
good-nature for a whole year. I would expect that the best 



428 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

way to be great-hearted in great things would be to master 
the aggravating practice of little things successfully. 

I would advise also that if one has any making up to do, 
it is well to do it now, for as a wise man has said : " A 
misunderstanding which is more than a month old may gen- 
erally be regarded as incapable of explanation." 

THE SYMPATHY OF A BIG BROTHER 

In this world, where each of us has his own troubles and 
most of us have less than the other fellow, it is a beautiful 
thing to be able to do something for those who have been 
called " God's poor things " and do it in a great way that 
shows brotherhood and sympathy. 

It is a splendid story of human sympathy and kindness 
that Stephen Chalmers tells of Dr. Edward L. Trudeau in 
an article in the Atlantic. Himself a consumptive, he was 
the head of the leading sanitarium in the world, builded by 
himself with the greatest struggle. " Many came to him 
as broken in spirit as in health, and often with but two 
hopes : one, that Trudeau would perform the great miracle ; 
the other, that a physician of his reputation would not 
charge more than this latest victim of tuberculosis could 
scrape together. I know of one case in which the new pa- 
tient said, ' Doctor — before you do anything — I haven't 
much money. How — how much will it cost ? ' 

" ' Much depends on how much you've got, and how bad 
you are,' said Trudeau, himself assisting to unbutton the pa- 
tient's collar. ' You see,' he went on disarmingly, ' if you 
are not very bad, it will cost you quite a lot, so I can use 
the money for those who are. If you are a really bad case 
— Well — Say " Ninety-nine," please, and keep on saying 
it while I listen to your chest.' 



GREAT-HEART, GUIDE TO PILGRIMS 429 

" The doctor's face became grave as he noted the vibra- 
tions caused by the reiterated ' nine-nine-nine. ' When the 
examination was over the patient asked — 

" ' How bad — I mean — how much will it be, doctor? ' 

'* For reply Trudeau — and one can imagine the great 
sympathy that flooded the beloved physician's face — 
handed the patient a ten-dollar bill. 

" ' I owe you — that much — at least/ he said. 

" One can imagine the rest — that speech which he em- 
ployed so often and to so many : — 

" ; Don't take it too seriously, but just seriously enough. 
I am no better off in health than you are, and both you and 
I, old man, will be a great deal worse before we're better.' " 



LV 
TILTERS AT WINDMILLS 

MOHAMMED said that when people who have been in 
the habit of engaging in ridicule go to Paradise, the 
door will be slammed in their faces, and that when they go 
back they will be called to another door and that will be 
slammed too, and so on, forever. ' Perhaps this story ex- 
plains why I am trying to be more tolerant of late years. 
I find that every time I ridicule anybody I shut some de- 
sirable door in my own face. 

I was not always so. When I saw any one do anything 
queer, I used to laugh, but I found I usually lost a friend 
by doing so. When one made a foolish or unreasonable 
statement, I instantly rebutted it, but those whom I opposed 
usually shunned me afterward. I saw that it was neces- 
sary to "live and let live" if I was going to keep up my 
friendships. 

Much may be learned when we are tolerant. I have a 
Christian Scientist neighbor who tells me that medical ex- 
amination of school children produces the very diseases it 
is intended to prevent and that mosquitoes don't bite Scien- 
tists, but by crushing down my smiles I have learned not 
only to keep the door open between us but also to admire the 
cheerful way in which he bears trouble, of which he has a 
plenty. I have a suffragist friend who informs me that the 
girls of the future will only marry upon salary and that in 
any case they will continue to live professional careers, re- 

430 



TILTERS AT WINDMILLS 431 

gardless of children, but by swallowing my rebellion I have 
learned a lot about the ambitions and longings of the girls 
of the present. I hardly ever read a published report of a 
sermon which does not impress me as narrow and bigoted, 
and I am always tempted to say so, but after keeping silent 
a while I have usually come to know those very same 
preachers and have always found them charming and gen- 
erous fellows. You know the old story ? "I don't like 
that man." "But do you know him? ,, "No, that's the 
reason I do not like him." 

Some ten years ago a club of young men to which I be- 
longed proposed to found a new magazine. It was to be 
called "I Move" and its purpose was to be to hit every 
head in sight. We were going to laugh a lot of false no- 
tions and practices out of existence. The magazine never 
came to birth, but during those years in which it has not 
existed, nearly every error it was to be established to fight 
has died a natural death, and we who were going to be the 
crusaders are not only much sweeter-tempered but know a 
good deal more to-day than we would if we had busied our- 
selves with windmills. 

In fact, when I think how noisy and disagreeable it was 
possible for me to be, I am glad, not merely to tolerate, but 
am thankful to be tolerated, and am learning to see how 
much more varied and amusing the world is because it con- 
tains so many people who do not agree with me. 

" Perhaps no man who ever lived," said William James 
once, " ever liked so many things or disliked so few things 
as Walt Whitman." Here is one place at least where we 
may wisely imitate the good gray poet. In his first book 
he published this personal resolution which I read over 
often : 



432 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" This is what you shall do : Love the earth and sun 
and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, 
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and 
labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have 
patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your 
hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or num- 
ber of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, 
and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re- 
examine all you have been told in school or church or in any 
book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul ; and your 
very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the greatest 
fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its 
lips and face." 

MAKE EVERY KNOCK A BOOST 

Sometimes it seems to us young persons that we do not 
get the degree of toleration that we are entitled to. Our 
minor faults and our little mistakes are criticised unmerci- 
fully. When this is done by our parents it is because they 
are genuinely anxious for us, and are concerned that we 
shall not hurt our long future by our shortsighted errors. 
They tell of a young artist who had the ambition to paint 
battle-scenes, but when he first visited a battle to get the 
effects his right arm was shot off. Our parents do not 
wish us to lose the very means by which we may succeed 
while studying our scene of battle. But when others criti- 
cise us who are older it is partly because of the pitiful envy 
of age that we are so eager and so young. Hafiz says that 
for every man's life there are two books, one of white, in 
which to write his good deeds and one of black, in which 
to write his faults, and that when the two are taken to 
heaven at his death to be opened by the angels, it will be 



TILTERS AT WINDMILLS 433 

found that, no matter how much or little is written in each, 
the black one will be seen to be almost thumbed away by 
busy readers, so much more interesting is it ! " It is so full 
of youth/' 

Why not be good-natured when you get a "knock"? 
Bernard Shaw was once about to make a speech at the con- 
clusion of one of his plays. " Boo ! " roared a voice from 
the gallery as he came forward. " Boo ! " "I agree with 
you, sir," laughed Shaw, as quick and as gay as a bird, 
" but what are we two against so many ? " 

Robert Haven Schauffler says that Richard Watson 
Gilder, the late editor of the Century, was one of the men 
from whom every knock was a boost. " Those bowed 
shoulders and deep-set, kindly eyes would emerge from the 
inner sanctum of the Century office. In three short sen- 
tences he would reject the story which had cost you two 
years of labor and travail. But all the time the fatal words 
were getting themselves uttered, so much ' virtue ' was pass- 
ing from him into you that you would turn from his pres- 
ence exhilarated, uplifted, and while treading higher levels 
for the next week, would produce a check-bearing tale. 
The check, however, would not bring you a tithe of the 
' virtue ' that the great editor's personal rebuff had brought." 

I am most thankful as I look back for the kindly thought- 
ful knocks that were given me by certain older persons who 
were interested in me when I was a boy. I learned the 
other day of the death at ninety years of a certain lawyer, 
and his passing reminded me with a thrill of just one time 
when he and I came together. He was a friend of my fa- 
ther, a tall, unbending figure. I never thought of him as 
a man — I knew he was an Episcopalian. But once when 
I was a college student and had gotten into some trouble 



434 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

that I have now forgotten, he drew me into his office and 
told me that, while he was sorry I had given anxiety to my 
father, he wanted me to know that when he was a lad he 
had been in very much the same scrape himself, and he 
wanted me to know, too, that he was certain that I would 
come out all right. I never passed him after that without 
remembering that he was my friend and that he trusted me. 



- 



LVI 

" NOT FIXED TO ENTERTAIN STRANGERS " 

¥ N many parts of this country, if you should be traveling 
■■■ on foot or horseback among the farmers and be over- 
taken by nightfall, you would find, if you asked for enter- 
tainment, that the housewives would say, " I am sorry, but 
we aren't fixed to entertain strangers." Often those who 
said this would not be poor people and often the tired way- 
farer who is obliged to go on for another mile or two or 
seek refuge in a strawstack feels aggrieved when he thinks 
how comfortable they might have made him had they chosen. 
These people really had all the stranger needed: shelter, 
food, comforts, everything but the open door. 

If the door had been opened, perhaps the farmer and his 
wife would always have been glad. The stranger could 
have brought them his own fresh experiences, he might 
have given them news of distant friends. Perhaps he would 
have turned out to be a world-traveler, who could have told 
them wonderful things about foreign lands. He might have 
been full of quaint humor; they might have derived from 
him an interesting life-story. The open door might have 
let in one who would become a life-long friend. They might 
have entertained an angel unawares. But the door did not 
open, because they weren't " fixed to entertain strangers." 

The difficulty probably was that they had an exaggerated 
idea of what hospitality is. They thought it consisted in 
making a stranger feel luxurious, when really it is only to 
make him feel at home. 

435 



436 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

A TEA-POT IN THE SOUL 

" She is so hospitable it might almost be said of her, she 
hath a tea-pot in her soul." 

" I know," says Helen Thoburn, " a woman who instead 
of grieving because she had no maid, and cannot afford to 
entertain easily or elaborately, often asks her neighbors to 
' come over for dessert,' and serves tray desserts around the 
library fire. I have seen some of the neighbors leave their 
own carefully served dinner-tables and run across lots with 
glee to be one of the dessert party, because it was real en- 
tertaining, of the heart, not of the pocketbook." 

The most beautiful home I ever visited was one where 
there were five children. The father was a minister — and 
you know ministers are seldom rich. But this was the rich- 
est home I ever saw. I won't describe the furniture. In 
fact all that I remember about it is that every piece looked 
as if it loved to be where it was and every picture on the 
walls was a dear friend. But it was the children that were 
the treasures of this home, and there was a particular rea- 
son why this was so. Every one of them had a hospitable 
heart. That is, each one loved to share his home with 
others. 

I reached there in the night. In the morning I was awak- 
ened by a knock and a voice in the hall. The knock was 
no louder than a fairy's cough and the voice was about four 
years tall. This was the youngest, coming to give me a 
morning welcome. He waited to lead me downstairs. 
When I reached the living-room the oldest daughter was 
waiting for me. If I had been as young and handsome 
as I sometimes like to think I am, I should not have won- 
dered at the hearty endeavor she made to give me a happy 



" NOT FIXED TO ENTERTAIN " 437 

half hour before breakfast. She was never to see me again, 
but she was so sweet that she contrived that I may never 
forget her. At the table the oldest son asked the blessing. 
The second one helped the second daughter to wait upon 
the table. This boy was so skillful about putting my rolls 
down to my left and my coffee at my right that I never 
even dodged for fear he would pour the latter into my 
neck. Let me see, Number Five — what did he give ? Oh, 
yes, he went clear out of his way to show me the station, 
and he gave me the last gift of all — a smile, as he turned 
the corner. 

Your mother has read a beautiful book called " The Sim- 
ple Life." The gentle writer of that book once stayed in 
this house, just as I did, and before he went away he said 
to the father, " I have dreamed about the simple life. Here 
I have seen it." 

GIVE A STRANGER A CHANCE 

Are you " fixed to entertain strangers " ? I don't mean 
house-guests, but heart-guests. Yesterday a new boy came 
to school. He looked lonesome, but all your thought was 
that he looked unpromising. He did not dress like you. 
He talked diffidently. He did not look as if he would fit 
into your set. He came from " over the river " or from 
another county or even from across the water. You did 
not open your door to him. Now no doubt he lost some- 
thing. He needed a friend and he did not get one, and 
you can be a good friend when you try. You will never 
learn what he has to teach. You will never know what 
" over the river " is like. You will never find out how 
school boys live in the strange country he came from. You 
will never have his grateful affection. Maybe you will wish 



438 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

some day you had known him. There was a poor boy 
once in a western town whom boys like you would never 
have cared to know. He was long-legged and awkward, 
he was swarthy and homely, and he came into his new home 
out of a log cabin. But he became President later, and a 
hundred thousand people stood in the darkness, after he 
died, along the railroad tracks on which his body was to 
be carried to burial. And the reason why Abraham Lin- 
coln was greatly loved was because his hand was always 
open, his ear always bent to hear and, as an old phrase in 
the Bible puts it, he " knew the heart of a stranger." His 
own heart, like a great homely mansion, had no special 
guest chamber, but the hearth fire was always burning, the 
door latch was hung outside, and so he was always fixed 
to entertain strangers. 

Give the stranger a chance to make good. " We must be 
as courteous to a man as we are to a picture which we are 
willing to give the advantage of a good light," said Emer- 
son. Try this fellow you don't like in a better light. See 
him with those he likes. Watch him when he is at his 
best. Start a bridge toward him and not a barricade. 

Why is it that when some people meet a stranger they 
fumble about until they discover some friend whom they 
have in common? Or why are they so pleased when they 
find that they have both visited the same city or had the 
same kind of surgical operation? It is because they are 
both trying to build a bridge across to each other. 

Why is it that when you start to talk about people you 
love who are unknown to your friend he loses interest? 
Why when you tell about your trip abroad last summer does 
your audience grow inattentive? Because you are building 
a barrier instead of a bridge. 



" NOT FIXED TO ENTERTAIN " 439 

Is it true that you are friendless because, as you think, 
you are " shy " ? No, it really is because you are selfish. 
By refusing to take the trouble to consider what your com- 
panions are interested in and by refraining from talk except 
when the subject of conversation is about your own con- 
cerns, you do not build the bridges by which alone it is easy 
to step from one life into another. 

Those who have plenty of friends are always masterly 
bridge-builders. 

THE ORDER OF THE PONTIFF BROTHERS 

Near the old Quaker settlement where I live, there are 
two stone memorials which were given to the community 
by public-spirited citizens. 

One of these is a meeting-house. It is called " Blue 
Church " because of the color of its stone, and the lane at 
the head of which it stands is still known as Blue Church 
Road. The building was erected a hundred and twenty-five 
years ago. It stood on the land of a great farm. Its donor 
became the first national Commissioner of Education at 
Washington. He himself was a Quaker, but he dedicated 
the property to the use of any company of Christians who 
would occupy it. This was perhaps the first union house 
of worship in America. All creeds have met here, although 
often there has been a minister of some particular denomi- 
nation in charge. The last, I think, was a Baptist. The 
interior of the church has the plainness of a Quaker meeting- 
house and when there has been no pastor the simple ways 
of the Friends have prevailed. As the community has 
grown and declined, the church has had its vicissitudes, and 
just now it is closed, but with the suburban growth there 
is little doubt that it will be used again, and two old men, 



440 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

faithful trustees, keep it in repair. The benefactor lies 
among his neighbors in a stone box-tomb near the porch of 
Blue Church. 

The other memorial is a few rods down the hill. It is 
a stone bridge, and a tablet upon it tells that it was " Built 
Gratis, by James Thompson." It is much more recent than 
the church, and was, one supposes, built because of its 
example. I do not know who James Thompson was or 
what honors, if any, he earned or whether he is buried in 
Blue Churchyard. But I like to do him reverence. He 
was not rich enough to build a church so he made a bridge, 
and probably did it with his own hands. The other gave 
money, he gave himself. Blue Church was a bridge be- 
tween earth and heaven. Thompson's bridge simply kept 
the way open between Secane and Nether Providence parish. 
The township was moved by Thompson's generosity to place 
a watering-trough at the end of the bridge which is marked 
" Springfield Free Fountain." 

Blue Church is closed, but the bridge is still open. The 
reputation which has come to those men is a minor matter. 
Those who dash over the bridge and rush by the church 
in automobiles do not notice either memorial. But both 
men must have lain down to die in great satisfaction. Like 
John the Baptist, each had " prepared the way of the Lord," 
one to heaven and the other across a Pennsylvania stream- 
let. I would like to be a road-maker, too, and if I cannot 
give a church, perhaps I can build a bridge. 

I have read that in ancient Rome bridge-building was a 
sacred act, so much so that the chief bridge-builder, the 
" Pontifex Maximus " in Latin, was also the chief priest. 
And in the middle ages, among the many religious societies 
that existed to promote human welfare and to lighten the 



"NOT FIXED TO ENTERTAIN" 441 

burdens of life, was the Order of Pontiff Brothers, or 
bridge-builders. The Pope at Rome was proud to be their 
head, and to assume the old title of Pontiff Maximus, which 
he still holds, chief bridge-builder. 

In those old times lived a boy named Benezet, or Little 
Benedict. While he was tending sheep upon a distant hill- 
side a heavenly call came to him, bidding him go build a 
bridge where none had yet been across the broad and dan- 
gerous Rhone at Avignon. He came to Avignon, staff in 
hand, and entreated the bishop and people to help him. 
But they thought the task impossible. So Benezet set to 
work alone, and the story goes that in some way he was 
able to raise the big stones and lift weights which strong 
men were unable to move. When a few joined him they 
secured the help of the Brothers Pontiff. The first piers 
began to rise. It was the labor of years, and of immense 
effort, and before the bridge was completed its boy builder 
died, and they buried him in a little chapel above one of the 
great piers. But the building went on, and to-day genera- 
tions have passed over the huge structure, by the shrine of 
St. Benezet. 

In the old Pagan days it was customary to sacrifice a 
human life during the building of a bridge, so that the pow- 
ers of the earth and of the stream might not destroy it by 
some sudden storm or earthquake. In a nobler way Benezet 
gave his life for the bridge of Avignon. And " still," says 
the writer who tells the legend of the shepherd boy, " still> 
if the bridge of life is to be well and truly laid, there must 
be sacrifice at its foundations." 

There are many streams and barriers that need to be 
bridged to-day, between man and man. Let us revive the 
Order of Pontiff Brothers. Let us be bridge-builders. 



LVII 

THE SAD ADVENTURES OF SUSIE DAMN 

¥ HAVE just been reminded of the Lady of the Decora- 
* tion, that delightfully frivolous person who went to 
teach kindergarten in a mission school in Japan. When 
things were going especially badly she used to run off to 
her room and take out her temper pn a poor tumble-doll, 
that as often as it was knocked down, came bobbing up 
again. And she called her doll " Susie Damn." Since I 
have been thinking much about just home things the idea 
has grown upon me that we all make Susie Damns of our 
families — and they, bless their hearts, usually come up 
smiling after the blows. 

" Why is it so fatally easy to be cross to those we love ? 
All of us are comparatively gracious and considerate and 
courteous to the people we meet just once in a while, but 
it seems to take an almost superhuman power to 'keep 
sweet ' at home." 

I found these words of Alice Colter's refreshing; also 
her further remark : " Yours isn't the only home where 
passions ' rage round a tea-table.' " She remarks further 
that even if, in the nursery rhyme, Jack Sprat and his wife 
did get along nicely because they liked different things, " if 
there were four little Sprats, I'll warrant every one of 
them howled for the same thing. That's the way of fam- 
ilies." 

Presumably every family has its own way of keeping 

442 



SAD ADVENTURES OF SUSIE DAMN 443 

truce, even if sometimes it is an armed one. I know of 
one household where there is a " silence room," to which 
any member who feels disturbed in spirit betakes himself 
before he is moved to speak bitterly to another. 

One mother of my acquaintance has the pretty habit of 
saying occasionally that " Arthur, or Helen, will be our 
guest to-day." Everybody then tries to be particularly po- 
lite and attentive to Arthur or Helen, and nobody in the 
family, except perhaps the grown-ups, has discovered yet 
that u the guest " is always somebody whom the alert mother 
has noticed to be feeling a little " touchy " that day. 

A rather different plan has been worked out by a certain 
mother of boys who appoints each morning a " captain of 
the day," who has authority over the chores and cleaning- up 
tasks for that one day, and who is generally in command. 
She found that this device of giving one person at a time 
special responsibility does away almost entirely with that 
grumbling quarrelsomeness that runs rife in so many house- 
holds. 

Of course disagreeableness in the home is no worse when 
company is present than at any other time. We simply 
feel its impropriety then more. Miss Colter tells of a fam- 
ily that worked out a code of warnings for warding off 
such storms. 

" Let me tell you about how one family has partially 
solved this problem. As soon as a dispute seems to be be- 
ginning, some one other than the disputants, asks a ques- 
tion containing the word ' red,' a perfectly proper, serious 
question, into which guests would not read a double mean- 
ing, but of which the ' red ' means : ' There's danger ahead. 
Won't you, please, for the sake of togetherness, stop, before 
the wreck?' Of course, sometimes the steam is too high, 



444 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

but usually the secret meaning of the question amuses the 
person and trouble is averted." 

The same writer points out the fact that a great deal 
may be done to keep a family loving and kind if they not 
only have secrets, like this one, but all sorts of jokes and 
celebrations. 

" I know of one very interesting silliness blossom in a 
family of grown-ups. Years ago, a queer, hideous little 
statue of some heathen god came as a gift, and ever since, 
it has been traveling. No one wants it, but no one in the 
family can refuse to take it except from the hands of some 
one else in the family. So it gets packed in bags and trunks ; 
the big brother who thinks he is finally off on the train 
without it looks complacently up from his paper to receive 
it from the hands of the porter. The interesting, present- 
looking package turns out to be the hideous little much- 
traveled god. 

" Perhaps these silliness blossoms seem inane to you. 
Other people's silliness always seems so silly and our own 
so delightfully funny! But if you grow your own it won't 
seem too silly — and you'll have the time of your life doing 
it!" 

I have always supposed myself to be the inventor of 
imaginary birthdays. The other day, feeling very kindly 
disposed to a certain young lady, we agreed to have a spe- 
cial birthday party, celebrating the fact that she was seven- 
and-a-half and that I was forty-seven-and-a-half years old. 
The beauty of this pleasant celebration is that you always 
have at least two birthdays on the same day — and you can 
have as many of them as you wish in a year, without mak- 
ing yourself a year older. 

All these are just ways of trying to see those we love 



SAD ADVENTURES OF SUSIE DAMN 445 

best with new eyes. It surprises a boy sometimes to learn 
the man whom he heard spoken of with such respect is his 
own father, that it is his mother who is so generally ad- 
mired, that some people actually think his sister is pretty, 
and that even his " kid " brother has some worshiping 
friends. These splendid folks are our folks, and if we can 
only discover them anew, the Land of Togetherness will 
be at peace. 

CLAMBERING OVER PEOPLE 

When the French steamer La Bourgoyne went down off 
the coast of Nova Scotia some persons reached the life- 
boats by leaping over others. In the Iroquois Theater fire 
in Chicago some men reached safety by making a bridge 
of the bodies of women and children. 

We call this dastardly, yet in smaller affairs we some- 
times show the same spirit. When a boy in high school 
gets himself elected president of his class through the undue 
influence of his own clique or his athletic prowess, by cul- 
tivating the friendship of those who can help him and by 
ignoring those who cannot, he has climbed by trampling. 

Margaret Slattery tells this incident. The heavy door 
flew back striking with great force a frail little woman with 
a great basket on her arm. A cry of surprise and pain 
escaped her lips. She tried to adjust her hat, but the mo- 
ment she raised her arm she grew very white and sat down 
on the tiled floor. The girls hurrying from the elevator 
found her there. Her wrist was broken. She could hardly 
bear the news when they told her. 

" It isn't the pain," she said, " I could bear that. It is 
my work. How can I do it ! Sweeping and washing can't 
be done with one hand. There are three grandchildren, all 



446 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

little ones. Their mother died last summer." She covered 
her face for a moment and cried, then added pathetically, 
" Ye see, I'm not as young as I used to be, and the door is 
pretty heavy. I thought he saw me and he'd probably hold 
it open for me, but he never once looked behind him." 

Then the physician came and the girls helped the old 
lady into his machine that he might take her home — home 
to the three little children dependent upon her; home, with 
her means of support gone for some weeks at least; home 
to the pain and suffering which she must endure in the night 
as she worried about food, coal and clothing. Old and need- 
ing protection and love, she was left without either, and 
her heavy burdens made heavier because a stalwart young 
man " never once looked behind him." 

We trample because we do not see. We hurt because we 
do not look behind. Selfishness is always blind. When 
we greet the family at breakfast and ignore the maid we 
forget that the brightness of her mornings as well as that 
of other members of the household is at least partly in our 
custody. When we storm because we get the wrong num- 
ber at the telephone we forget that the plug that makes the 
connection for us is in the hands of a human being, though 
not visible, and that we are helping to darken the day for 
some one whom we have never seen. So we go jugger- 
nauting along through the day, playing noisily upon the 
heart-strings of friends and strangers, quite unaware of the 
bruises and discords that we leave behind us. 

That beggars and book-agents deserve no courtesy seems 
a matter of course to some people. I once learned some- 
thing in this direction. A frail young woman came to my 
door to sell coupons for photographs. It was a bleak day 
and my wife took pity on her and invited her in to get warm. 



SAD ADVENTURES OF SUSIE DAMN 447 ' 

She proved to be a young woman of ability and refinement, 
who had taken up this ungrateful work as a necessity. This 
was her first day at it, and it had been a hard one. She had 
received no kind word until she came to our door. The 
upshot was that she was a member of my household for 
three years, and became a lifelong friend. 

Those who come to the door do not always turn out to 
be angels unaware. Neither do they deserve to be hurt 
at our thresholds. In the days of the patriarchs whoever 
crossed the threshold was treated as a guest from God. 
If he shared the salt he was safe in sanctuary, even if he 
were an enemy. The threshold was so sacred that cove^ 
nants were made over it as over an altar. It lay in the 
doorway as a guidepost to kindness. It seemed to say: 
" Tread on me if you will, because I am made of stone, but 
do not go forth over me to tread on the heart of a man, 
because that is not made of stone. " 

SWEETBRIAR LIVES 

I like the man Ford Madox Hueffer tells about, " who 
would never quarrel with any one in his own house, because 
of his respect for his own roof ; he would quarrel with no 
one under a friend's roof out of respect for his friends. 
He would not even write an unfriendly letter in his own 
or a friend's house. Consequently if he wanted to ' have 
it out ' with a man he had to invite him to some public 
place, or if he wanted to write he would retire to the near- 
est hotel." Even when this dear old gentleman was help- 
less he used to have himself carried to an inn, so as not to 
sully his own roof with an unkind word or epistle. 

In Macedonia, when a bride comes to her husband's 
house, she bows to her parents-in-law, kisses their hands, 



448 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

and receives from them into her mouth gold pieces which 
they hold to her between their teeth. This is a pledge that 
none but words of gold will ever pass between them. I 
could wish that the magic of such a " gold cure " might 
never be forgotten by us. 

How lovely must have been the woman whose home life 
had so preserved its sweetness that they carved over her 
grave simply: " She was so pleasant." She was like the 
sweetbriars that an earlier generation used to plant beside 
house-doors. 

" The garden has many roses, 

But only one is there 
Whose leaves as well as its petals 

Exhale a fragrance rare. 
The hero is like the rose-bloom, 

But, beside him, lowlier strives 
The life with the everyday fragrance; 

Such are the sweetbriar lives. 

"Some of the garden's roses 

Die with the dying year, 
But the sweetbriar keeps on growing 

And is here when the spring is here. 
And some lives, thank God, perennial, 

Close to the house-door grow 
And spring would be winter without them, 

For their hearts bring the spring, you know. 

" Some worship the hothouse roses ; 

Gold buys their velvet blooms. 
They nod on the bosom of Beauty, , 

They scent the stateliest rooms. 
But the sweetbriar goes not to market, 

In the crowd it asks no part, 
Yet a man may love the sweetbriar 

And wear it on his heart." 



LVIII 

FOR FATHERS AND SONS 

"T1THAT shall I do," a boy wrote me the other day, 
^* " to get my father interested in baseball? There 
doesn't seem to be anything that we can talk about pleas- 
antly when we are at home together, and I am afraid that 
we are not very good friends." 

Now I blame that father ; I will be frank about it. Base- 
ball is as important to that boy just now as business is to 
that man. But I have given the matter a second thought. 
That man has six children, and I have no doubt his busi- 
ness costs him a good deal more care and energy than base- 
ball does his oldest son. 

Why shouldn't the boy give a little thought to the busi- 
ness that gives him his baseballs? Perhaps the father is 
thinking that some day, unless that boy wakes up, there 
won't be any more baseballs for his son. And maybe, too, 
the father doesn't see how baseball is going to help that boy 
take care of himself or anybody else. 

That boy, let us say, is dragged out of bed, after being 
called three times, at a quarter to nine in the morning. He 
comes home at noon to a hot lunch. At three o'clock his 
work for the day is over, and then he has nothing to think 
of but baseball in the summer and the movies in the winter 
until supper-time. But the father had to get up at half- 
past six, he worked all day with a cold lunch or no lunch 
at all, he works up to six o'clock at night, and when the 

449 



450 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

boy starts in at the supper-table to talk about the good 
time he has been having, is it strange — let us be fair, now 
— that father should feel he has had about all the " good 
time " he can stand that day? 

I wonder, too, how many of you youngsters realize that 
when a father gets between forty-five and fifty, things often 
so shape themselves that a man doesn't know or care whether 
he is going to win or not. And sometimes it is his boy, 
the boy who doesn't realize how much his father is inter- 
ested in the way his son tackles his play and his work, that 
can give a father back his youthful courage and lend him 
both love and energy never to acknowledge defeat. 

THE FRESHMAN FULL-BACK 

Have you ever read that splendid story of Ralph Paine's, 
in his " College Years," entitled " The Freshman Full- 
Back " ? 

Ernest Seeley is a freshman " sub " on the Yale eleven. 
His father is a newspaper reporter in New York, a dis- 
couraged man, " worked out at forty-five," whose only joy 
in life is the boy in college. 

The father has been assigned suddenly to report the great 
game with Princeton. When he reaches the grounds at 
New Haven he finds by the score-card that the spectators 
are looking for a catastrophe — - a substitute is to play full- 
back. The name is Ernest Seeley. 

The boy starts nervously and loses the ball on the open- 
ing kick. Princeton sees her opportunity and contrives to 
center the game on this weakest link in the chain. At the 
end of the first half, when Princeton is on Yale's ten-yard 
line and Yale is putting up her best bull-dog defense, the 
ball shoots into young Seeley's grasp from a faultless pass, 



FOR FATHERS AND SONS 451 

his fingers juggle it, it slips, he dives after it, but it bounds 
beyond his grasp. The Princeton quarter darts through the 
line like a bullet, scoops up the ball and crosses the goal- 
line. Ten thousand Princeton throats bark their jubilation, 
while " as many more loyal friends of Yale sit sad-eyed 
and sullen and glower their unspeakable displeasure at the 
slim figure of the full-back as he limps into line." 

During the intermission there was excited discussion 
about the elder Seeley in the reporters' section. " He did 
make a hideous mess of it, didn't he? I hope he hasn't a 
streak of yellow in him." 

Henry Seeley turned on his neighbor with a savage 
scowl : 

" He belongs to me, I want you to understand, and we'll 
say nothing about yellow streaks until he has a chance to 
make good next half." 

At sundown the Yale machine began to find itself. With 
straight old-fashioned football they worked as one and car- 
ried the ball along for down after down into the heart of 
Princeton's ground. Perhaps because he was fresher than 
the other backs, the ball was given to the young full-back 
for one battering assault after another. Gamely he worked 
out his own salvation, though once he was dragged out from 
beneath a heap of players a huddled heap. But soon the 
surgeon got him up again, and he staggered to his feet. 

At length Princeton stood in their last extremity. Seeley, 
who had been given a little respite, was sent into the sem- 
blance of an opening and got the ball to the five-yard line. 
Again, though swaying in his tracks, he dived in behind 
the interference. " Pulled down, dragging the tackier who 
clung to his waist, he floundered to earth with most of the 
Princeton team piled above him. But the ball lay beyond 



452 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

the fateful chalk-line, the Yale touchdown was won." See- 
ley had won the right to try for goal. 

" Up in the press-box a thick-set, grayish man dug his 
fists in his eyes and could not bear to look at the lonely, 
reliant figure down yonder on the quiet field. The father 
found courage to take his hands from his face only when 
a mighty roar of joy boomed along the Yale side of the 
ampitheatre, and he saw the ball drop in a long arc behind 
the goal-posts. The kick had won the game for Yale." 

As Henry Seeley walked, head up, with a free stride, to 
the training quarters, he was saying over to himself phrases 
he had just heard from an old college chum : " Chip of 
the old block," "blood will tell." "The verdict sounded 
like the ringing call of bugles. It made him feel young, 
hopeful, resolute, that life was worth having for the sake 
of its strife." Such a son deserved something better than 
a quitter for a father. 

And when he had grasped the boy by the hand, Ernest 
said with a smile of affectionate admiration : 

" I was thinking of you in that last half. It helped my 
nerve a lot to remember that my father never knew when 
he was licked! We've got to keep up the family record 
between us." 

And the father with a vibrant earnestness in his voice 
answered : " I'm not worrying about your keeping the 
family record bright, Ernest. And however things may go 
with me, you will be able to hang fast to this, that your 
father, too, doesn't know when he is whipped." 

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS 

One of the most sensible chapters I have ever read upon 
the similarly important matter of the relation between girls 



FOR FATHERS AND SONS 453 

and their mothers is found in Mrs. Burton Chance's 
" Mother and Daughter." I believe she would like to have 
me summarize it for you. She begins with the startling 
remark that it is the rarest thing for a mother and her 
daughter of sixteen to be living in sympathetic accord. 
The daughter is feeling her first sense of independence. 
The mother wishes to be sympathetic, yet at the same time 
she is so anxious for her girl's welfare that she wishes also 
to be strong and firm. So there is friction. The daughter 
can never understand how hard a time this was for her 
mother until she has children of her own. 

Many girls at this age have the feeling that they are pass- 
ing through states of mind that nobody has ever felt before. 
But, as Mrs. Chance says, " The mother understands quite 
well what is going on. She knows that the rampant ener- 
gies, fancied importance, and but half -subdued emotions of 
her child must all be toned down by endless knocks and 
disappointments." And she adds, speaking to girls : " You 
cannot be too considerate of your mother. You cannot 
show her enough love. She is not pulling against you with 
the intention of spoiling your fun. She is thinking night 
and day of how she can help you to be a good woman, fit 
you to love a noble man and bring healthy children into the 
world. She wants to protect you from foolishness, that 
committed in ignorance, might unfit you for this high voca- 
tion. Try to think that what she does is right. By sweet- 
ness, loyalty and love you may be able to repay your mother 
for the many sacrifices she has made for you." 

The best way for a girl to adjust herself to her mother 
is to arrive at some definite relation of responsibility in the 
home, in cooperation with her mother. As I have observed 
it, most girls of high-school age are in their own homes 



454 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

practically scullery-maids or ladies of leisure, that is, they 
either help around in the same little way they did when they 
were small girls, or else they excuse themselves because of 
being busy in school and let their mothers wait upon them. 
Both attitudes are wrong, and both lead to misunderstand- 
ings. The scullery-maid attitude leads to rebelliousness and 
the fine-lady attitude leads to selfishness. A healthy, capable 
high-school girl, with her bright brain and the instruction 
she has had in domestic science, ought to be able to volun- 
teer to take entire charge of some definite department of the 
housekeeping. And then if a wise mother can learn to let 
her daughter alone, when she finds out that she is really 
serious and competent (for it is keeping too closely and 
frequently in contact with each other in a house that makes 
women nag each other), the mother will get some well- 
deserved rest, and the daughter will grow visibly in pride, 
efficiency and womanliness. 



LIX 
THE PART YOU WILL PLAY IN SCHOOL 

MANY of you will enter high school this fall. Others of 
you are in the early years of your course. Have you 
decided the part you will play in the school ? 

Perhaps you have not yet given the matter a thought. 
Possibly you have felt, as a freshman, so awed by the 
strangeness of everything and by the reputation of the fore- 
most athletes and the brilliant leaders in the upper classes, 
that you have given up the idea of taking a large part in 
anything. It may be that you dream of rising to the top, 
though it is not clear to you just how you are going to 
do it. 

To the thoughtless freshman this word ought to be said : 
Many goals are within the reach of your endeavor, but you 
will not be likely to attain any of them until you fix your 
eye upon one and work toward it. 

" On every committee of thirteen persons," said Joseph 
Chamberlain once, " there are twelve who go to the meet- 
ings having given no thought to the subject, and ready to 
receive instructions. One goes with his mind made up to 
give those instructions. I make it my business to be that 
one." It is true that a boy is often physically the strongest 
in his group, and thus leads ; that a girl is the prettiest, and 
so queens it. But let one join either group who has got 
bright ideas, and presently the whole pack is following his 
trail. 

455 



456 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Commonly a crowd that wants a good time does not know 
just how to have it. The boy who knows leads them all. 
Read " Penrod " ; don't imitate him in all his scrapes, but 
note this, that the reason Penrod could lead was because 
he was ready-minded. 

" Everybody," said David Starr Jordan, " turns out of 
the way of the man who knows whither he is going." 

To the freshman who would like to take a place in the 
school life but does not know how, this suggestion may be 
made: If you want anything in school pay the price and 
it will be yours. The price of being on the football eleven 
is to be a faithful " scrub." The price of high scholarship 
is hard study. The price of a school honor is to do honor 
to the school by your devotion to it. You may meet some 
favoritism, some discouragement, but a good man in any 
school cannot be kept down for the whole of four years. 

To the humble freshman this word may be spoken : You 
will not always be a freshman. Some day you will be a 
senior. You will then not be a freshman competing against 
upper-classmen; you will be an upper-classman yourself. 
There is no line of effort in which four years of endeavor 
will not give you some recognition. A prominent football 
player in a high school of three thousand pupils told me 
that when he was a freshman he never expected to be more 
than a " scrub," but he added : " I can say this for the 
encouragement of young boys. There is not a ' scrub ' in 
this school who has worked faithfully for four years who 
has failed to win his 'letter.'" The same is true in the 
debating society and in the classroom. And as for school 
popularity, it is a well-known fact that the prominent fresh- 
man is seldom heard of as a senior, while the freshman who 



THE PART YOU WILL PLAY IN SCHOOL 457 

has school spirit and works hard in any line for his school 
is bound as a senior to have many friends. 

People will not like us just because we want to be liked. 
The queer secret is that the only way liking is satisfied is 
when we give it, not seek it. Try this out. A sensible 
college man once gave this advice : " Forget all about your- 
self for four years, and then you may wake up and find 
yourself popular." There is a good deal to it. 

The best thing you can do in high school is not to get 
something for yourself but to add something to the school. 
In the school mentioned above, an Honor Society grants its 
distinctions, which are highly prized, to those who during 
their course have done the most to enrich the school life. 
It is a fine thing to play on " the varsity," but the finest 
thing I have heard about the football man whom I have just 
mentioned is that " he plays the cleanest game on the 
eleven." 

I knew another fellow who was elected class president, 
but what gave him his honor was that he was noted for his 
kindness to ynder-classmen and his friendliness to all. Of 
another, the editor of the school paper, it was said that " it 
was easier to be decent in Old Central after he had been a 
student there." You can take a place like that. You can 
make the traditions of your school brighter when you leave. 
You can so live that when people think of the school and 
think of those who worthily represent that school, they will 
think of you. Every boy can do this. 

WHAT CAME TO STOVER AT YALE 

The finest college story of our time is no doubt Owen 
Johnson's " Stover at Yale.". When Stover landed at Yale 



458 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

from Lawrenceville, already something of an athlete and 
good fellow, his chief purpose was to get into the life of the 
University and to be a marked man. His idea of the way 
to do this was to " keep with the right crowd " and to fol- 
low loyally the college traditions. He started in to do this. 
He was successful. He moved right along with a group 
of wealthy and able fellows, he played football gloriously, 
he found himself in line for the popular college honors. 

But soon he discovered the unpleasant consequences of 
following the crowd. He had to do and stand some things 
that sickened him. He found, when he became easy-going 
in the presence of what was really degrading, that, as George 
Lorimer says, " The trouble with an elastic conscience is 
that it is apt to fly back and sting you." 

One day he met accidentally a student, whose quiet mien 
had given him no thought but pity that he should be so little 
in the life of the College. He found to his surprise that 
this fellow had been through struggles and adventures that 
made his own past seem pallid and that as for knowing 
life the other had been the only one of the two who had 
really encountered life at all. He decided to mix with this 
sort of man more, and see if he could learn something. At 
first it was not easy to do so. His own crowd did not 
understand him. 

Above the door of Marischal College, Aberdeen, still is 
set the motto in which the founders, the Earls Marischal, 
spoke their disdain of public opinion : 

They half said 
Quhat say they? 
Lat theme say. 

Stover decided that he would " lat theme say." 



THE PART YOU WILL PLAY IN SCHOOL 459 

" Why will you keep caring what the world says ? " Gen- 
eral " Chinese " Gordon used to ask. " Hoist your flag 
and abide by it. You have no idea what a great deal of 
trouble it will save you." Stover was not long in rinding 
this to be so. He not only was soon able to make his own 
company and to live his own life, but he gradually carried 
others over to his way of thinking. 

" Fear God, and take your own part," cries the sturdy 
heroine Isopel Berners in " Lavengro." " The world can 
bully, and is fond, provided it sees a man in a kind of diffi- 
culty, of getting about him, calling him coarse names, and 
even going so far as to hustle him; but the world, like all 
bullies, carries a white feather in its tail, and no sooner sees 
the man taking off his coat, and offering to fight its best, 
than it scatters here and there, and is always civil to him 
afterwards." 

Stover went so far as to oppose some of the cherished 
customs of Yale, which he thought interfered with the de- 
mocracy of the College. He raised a storm about his ears 
and lost a good many of his so-called friends. He learned 
to endure even this and so fulfilled to some extent Emer- 
son's idea of a great man, " who in the midst of the crowd 
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of soli- 
tude." 

The test of Stover's strength came at the close of his 
junior year. The names of those elected to the senior 
societies were to be announced, according to immemorial 
custom, in College Yard. The whole University gathers, 
and the lucky fifteen who have been selected as the most 
prominent members of the incoming Senior class are 
" tapped " one after another by individuals of the present 
Seniors in the presence of everybody. It was expected that 



460 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

even an independent Junior, like Stover, would be on the 
spot, with fortitude to watch his own rejection. 

It was a stiff ordeal. Stover stood grimly and watched 
men weaker than himself given the accolade of fame, until 
it came to the last man. Stover is standing beside his friend 
Hungerford. Then, says the author: 

" Le Baron came like a black tornado, rushing over the 
ground straight toward the tree. Once some one stumbled 
into his path, and he caught him and flung him aside. 
Straight to the two he came, never deviating, straight past 
Dink Stover, and suddenly switching around almost knocked 
him to the ground with the crash of his blow. 

" * Go to your room ! ' 

" It was a shout of electrifying drama, the voice of his 
society speaking to the college. 

"About him pandemonium broke loose. Still dazed, he 
felt Hungerford leap at him, crying in his ears: 

" ' God bless you, old man. It's great, great — they rose 
to it. It's the finest ever.' 

And later Hungerford, disappointed though he is not to 
have been chosen himself, exclaims: 

" ' By George, it meant something to feel they could rise 
up and know a man, and you've hit pretty close to them, old 
boy/ 

" ' Yes, I have, but I've believed it.' 

" ' It shows the stuff that's here,' said Hungerford, ' when 
you once can get to it. Now I take off my hat to them.' " 

Stover, because of his independence, had grown to be so 
big a man that the leading crowd in college, if they were 
to continue to deserve to lead, could not afford to leave him 
out. 



THE PART YOU WILL PLAY IN SCHOOL 461 

SUGGESTIONS ABOUT GETTING ALONG WITH FOLKS 

In hours of council you never make a mistake if you speak last; 
seldom if you do not speak at all. In silence great battles are won. 

The noisiest objectors are seldom in the majority. 

Whenever you feel talkative you are opening up a chance to 
make a fool of yourself, for you are getting ready to talk without 
thinking. 

You can never conquer a man whom you cannot anger. 

Let the other man's wrath pour cold water on your own. So 
you at least will keep your head. An angry boxer always pounds 
the air. 

The kindest victory is to get a man who opposed a plan to favor 
it, and even to think he invented it. 

Be reinforced concrete, covered with velvet. 



LX 

AN EFFICIENCY CHART OF AMUSEMENTS 

^* OME time ago Edward Earle Purington suggested in 
^-^ The Independent that it would be a good thing once in 
a while to test our amusements by an " Efficiency Amuse- 
ment Chart." He advises that we write down in a column 
the things in play that we find helpful and in a parallel 
column the things that are the opposite. Then he would 
run across the page a list of amusements. We would then 
check by a ( + ) sign the amusements that we find do us 
good, by a ( — ) sign those that are harmful, and by a (O) 
those that do not count either way. Perhaps our sheet 
would look something like this when we got it ready for 
scoring : 

Ideal AMUSEMENTS 

Conditions Tennis Baseball Dancing Parties Theatre Cards Camping, etc. 

Outdoor life + + — — — — + 

Simplicity ..... + + — — — — + 

Money-saving O O — — — — O 

Sound sleep .... -f- + — — — — + 

Useful emotions. + -j- — — + — + 

Appetite + + — — — — + 

Strong muscles. + + + — — — + 

Society + + + + O + + 

Inspiration + + — — + — ~f" 

Each one can extend this in his own way. 
" I am not so foolish," says Mr. Purington, " as to sup- 
pose that a sane man will, for the rest of his days, consult 

462 



EFFICIENCY CHART OF AMUSEMENTS 463 

a dry table of Efficiency Values whenever he wants to play 
chess or frolic with the baby. I do believe, however, that 
a shrewd, ambitious man will construct this chart for him- 
self, will study it carefully, and will form the habit of 
choosing his games from the plus side of the efficiency 
ledger. 

" The efficiency principles embodied in the Chart may be 
stated in a few words. A scientific recreation should in- 
clude : 

" 1. Complete break in routine activities and obligations, 
with specific rest for overworked organs, nerves, brain- 
cells and muscles. 

" 2. Exercise for unused faculties and functions, to the 
point of wholesome fatigue of a kind seldom known. 

" 3. An element of surprise, mental, emotional or spir- 
itual, to reawaken interest in everyday life. 

" 4. Absolute freedom, inner and outer, during the recre- 
ation period. 

" 5. Uplift and renewal." 

The most hurtful amusements are those that take away 
one's manhood. The young person who pursues them is 
like the man in the terrible story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde who nursed his lower nature until it became another 
self that lurked, a hideous and murderous demon, in his 
chambers, who had to be anxiously concealed but who at 
last broke out and left the true self prostrate and helpless 
behind. 

I would not have any pleasure that I had to get to with 
a trap-door. I would not cherish an amusement that 
had to be hidden from the sight of those who love and 
trust me. 



464 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

CHEAP FUN 

Still I sometimes think that it is not our pernicious but 
our cheap amusements that do most to weaken us. To 
quote a parody of the immortal " Rubaiyat " : 

" A Book of Coon Songs underneath the Bough, 
A Jug of Wine, a Dozen Buns, and Thou 
Beside me singing rag-time." . . . 

Ragtime has probably never driven men to theft or murder, 
but it has murdered a good many hours that might have 
been given to uplifting fellowship and stolen a lot of brains 
from otherwise bright young folks. 

Bear with me while I give a little advice. Bear with me, 
I say, for I have noticed that advice is like piano-playing; 
nobody wants to hear it and everybody wants to be paid 
for teaching it. Have you never noticed that, whenever 
you find that some favorite amusement is taking your 
strength from better things, the best way to conquer it is 
not by deprivation but by enrichment? As Agnes Gilbert 
says : " To forbid this pursuit is the weaker and less sure 
course; to open another gate, to spread another table of 
bounty, to build up another tower of strength — this is the 
wiser, the better and the surer way." 

GUINEA-PIG HAPPINESS 

Men who live directly for happiness " enjoy life as »a 
guinea pig enjoys life," Colonel Roosevelt told the Hill 
School boys. " Don't get down to the guinea pig level." 
He continued: "If there is any lesson I would like to 
impress upon you, it is that pleasure is in the long run pretty 
nearly worthless unless it comes as a by-product. I do not 
know any man who is more certain to lose happiness than 



EFFICIENCY CHART OF AMUSEMENTS 465 

the man who sits down with the conscious purpose of lead- 
ing a life with the one object of getting pleasure. The men 
I have known whom I respect and admire are men who 
have achieved something worth achieving by effort, by the 
acceptance perhaps of risk and hardship, by hard work and 
even by dreary work; who have had their eyes fixed on a 
goal worth striving for and have striven steadily toward it ; 
and those are the men who have had real happiness in life." 
Among the fairies, so the Irish say, there is only one in- 
dustrious person, the leprecaun or shoemaker, and this is 
because they wear their shoes out dancing all the time. But 
the Irish fairies are notable mischief-makers, and if we 
think to have a world in which nobody shall toil except to 
provide shoes for our dancing it will be a world of mis- 
chief indeed. 



LXI 

THE POSSESSOR OF THE PASSWORD 

***V¥THAT is it that makes a boy popular with girls? " I 
▼ ▼ once asked an older girl-cousin of mine when I 
was a boy. 

" It is courtesy," she replied. 

I did not believe her, and I went on to argue with her 
that it is good looks or gracefulness or money. But she 
stuck to her statement, and gave me many examples to 
prove it. I have since learned that it is so. Girls of course 
enjoy having money spent upon them — who does not? — 
and they are attracted by fine appearances — we all are. 
But after a time the boy who can remain a whole day with 
a girl and continue thoughtful and considerate throughout 
is the one who makes the deepest impression. 

Some fellows think girls like boys just because they are 
" tough." It is not so, but they do like many of the quali- 
ties which such men take time to cultivate. For instance, 
as Agnes Gilbert reminds us, " when she is twenty, the 
average girl takes small pleasure in entertaining or being 
entertained by a man who neglects to have his shoes pol- 
ished, his clothes pressed, or his hair cut. She is irritated 
when he forgets her tastes, and lets her hunt up her own 
chair or pay her own car- fare. The sophisticated man is — 
outwardly, at least — thoughtful, considerate and charming. 
Nice women prefer charming men to boors, and entertaining 
men to boors." 

466 



THE POSSESSOR OF THE PASSWORD 467 

Perhaps a sensible girl at least dimly realizes that the 
day may come, when she is no longer young and pretty, 
that lifelong courtesy will be the test and measure of real 
affection. She may rightly judge a boy's worth by his 
courtesy, not only to herself but to women who are older. 
Margaret Slattery pictures one who met this test finely, in 
the following incident. A young Irishman stood on the 
sidewalk of a crowded street one Saturday afternoon. As 
he was about to cross the street he saw standing near a 
frightened old lady with her arms full of parcels. Once 
or twice she tried to get courage to cross but each time 
stepped hurriedly back to the curb. Then the young Irish- 
man spoke. 

" Here," he said, " gimme yer bundles. There ! That's 
it. Now across wid ye. I'm right beside ye ! " and he 
hurried her in safety to the other side, placed the parcels 
in her arms and said good-by. His chum following behind, 
said as he joined him, " Was that yer mither, Jim? " 

" Sure, it was," he answered. " Ivery auld woman afraid 
ter cross the street is me mither." 

So this is the password by which men and women walk 
in to the inner circles of brotherhood. It is a great mys- 
tery to those who wait without, but it is simple, and any- 
body can have it. The trouble is, as it was with me, that 
many won't believe that it will unlock all the doors. 

WHAT A GIRL MOST LIKES 

The thing a girl most likes about a boy is suggested in 
the story of " Stover at Yale." Stover has not always 
been getting the best out of college, but he has come to 
think very much about his classmate's sister, Jean Story. 
He has been learning some of the more serious things of 



468 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

life lately, and he has come to tell her so. This is what she 
says: 

" You will do the big things now, won't you ? You see, 
I want to see you at your biggest." 

That is what a girl wants. In a way, we boys realize it. 
When we are small we try for a girl's admiration in a crude, 
physical way, by turning cartwheels down the dusty road 
ahead of her, and later by doing our best at football. What 
we are really after all the time, is to let her see us "at our 
biggest." But it takes some time for us to learn what 
her idea of our " biggest " is, and to the best kind of girl 
we discover that it means something pretty big indeed. 

SUGGESTIONS BY WHICH A GIRL MAY JUDGE THE 
WORTH OF A BOY 

Does he stand well with other boys? 

Is he courteous to your mother? 

Has he a good mother and a kind father ? 

Is he good-natured when others are cross? 

Is he kind with younger boys and girls, particularly in his own 
family ? 

Is he interested in talking about anybody but himself? 

Have you ever heard him say something pleasant about anybody 
else? 

Who pays for his good clothes? 

Does he know the value of a dollar from having earned one? 

Does he always talk to you as if you were somewhat foolish or 
as if he believed you know something? 

After he has left you do you feel as if you were more of a 
woman, or less? 



LXII 

THE PINNACLE OF GIRLHOOD 

IF a girl be asked what she must be like to be attractive 
* to boys, she is at once likely to think of one of two 
things : 

She must be pretty 

She must be anxious to please 

A mother, who has girls of her own, has found out that 
neither of these things is necessarily true. In the first place, 
she calls attention to the fact that while the merely pretty 
girl is likely to have plenty of admirers, the quality often 
does not match the quantity, and unless she chooses the best 
among them very soon, she is likely to become common and 
to be pulled down by the reputation of the undesirable ones 
that she allows to flock about her. On the other hand, the 
plain girl gets left alone by this lower class of boy, but 
when the boy who appreciates real brightness discovers 
that she has something to say, then she has her innings, 
because she appeals not merely to the eye but to the mind. 
In the second place, it is not true that a boy likes best the 
girl who is anxious to please him. It is a queer thing about 
a boy that he likes best the girl who makes a slave of him, 
and nothing will reduce a boy to speechless admiration and 
utter humility sooner than to know a girl up to whom he 
believes he cannot reach. The girl that is truly a " jewel " 
is the one who puts a great price on herself. The historic 

469 



470 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

queens of love, like Cleopatra and Mary Stuart, seem to 
have won adoration chiefly by causing men to feel that 
there was about them some mysterious preciousness that 
could hardly be either explored or won. The women to- 
day who have gained a truer and deeper affection are those 
who have caused men to find in them an interest that they 
felt it would take a lifetime to fathom. 

Here is where many a girl makes a mistake. She has 
a notion that the way to be popular with boys is to be free- 
and-easy with them, or, as a very coarse phrase has it, to 
be " a good Indian." If to be popular means to have a 
great many cheap and irresponsible youths following one, 
this may be the method. But what Mrs. Burton Chance 
says fits my observation completely. " Set your price high. 
An inexplicable little dignity of manner is all that a girl 
needs to shape and guide the advances of the roughest boy." 

" Would my smoking be unpleasant to you ? " asked a 
Frenchman, lifting his hat to a lady in a Paris bus. 

" I am sure I do not know," was the kindly but sufficient 
reply ; " no gentleman has ever yet smoked in my presence." 

And how the admiration of such a boy grows for the girl 
who dares and has the sense to use it! For, speaking of 
the later days when a real lover comes, she adds : " Abil- 
ity to win respect for her personality is the characteristic 
by which a woman most surely holds her lover." 

A boy's dreams of a girl are of some one who is un- 
approachable and stainless. He may play for a time with 
one who makes herself common, but he reserves his adora- 
tion for one who has kept her girlhood's stainless garments 
close about her and whose soul is as fresh and innocent as 
it was in childhood. 

How these words by Dick Steele, a great lover of the 



THE PINNACLE OF GIRLHOOD 471 

seventeenth century, ring like a song : " Though her mien 
carries more invitation than command, to behold her is an 
immediate check to loose behavior; and to love her is a 
liberal education." 

This explains why wise women take so much trouble with 
chaperonage. Of such a mother's care Mrs. Chance says : 
" It is not because she does not trust you or because she 
thinks you in any real danger; it is because she wishes to 
put a great price upon you before the world, to proclaim 
to every one the care with which she is trying to conserve 
in you all that is pure, chaste, and innocent." 

THE MAKING OF CALF-LOVE 

I have nothing but scorn for the boy of high-school age 
who is " spoony." 

I agree with Mrs. Chance that " a boy who would at- 
tempt to force any lover-like actions or conversation upon 
a girl still at school should be distrusted." If he means 
nothing by it, he is simply vulgar. If he means anything, 
he must mean that he would like to have the love of a girl 
before he has anything worth while to give her in return, 
for he has no preparation by which to ask her to share his 
lot, and he is tempting her to lose interest in her own get- 
ting ready for life. 

In my own home we have always treated girl-friendships 
with my sons just as we have boy- friendships, and enter- 
tained girls and boys alike. I feel sure this is the right 
way. I like to see boys and girls going to picnics in crowds 
and not in couples, and while I don't at all object to boys 
going to call on girls, I think it is a nice custom when two 
boy-chums go to see two girl-chums and have a jolly, whole- 
some evening all together. 



472 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

You can easily imagine that my idea of a boy-and-girl 
friendship is that it has a lot of outdoors in it, as Richard 
Hovey sang: 

" Fellow to rough weather, — 
No fretful orchid hothoused from the dew, 
But hale and hardy as the highland heather, 
Rejoicing in the wind that stings and thrills, 
Comrade of ocean, playmate of the hills." 

It was because we had always had this frank relation 
with our boys that when the first one came to be married we 
took a secret joy that we had really picked out his wife 
for him. We could not expect to do this with all of them, 
but it was at least a pleasant moment to me when I heard 
a lady say of the sweetheart of one of my sons : " How 
much she is like the boy's own mother." It is a fine thing 
when a boy makes the choice of a wife, patterning her after 
his mother's ideals. A modern poet represents a mother 
saying to her grown-up son : 

" Keep that proud body fine and fair, 
My love is monumented there. 
For my love make no woman weep, 
For my love hold no woman cheap, 
And see you give no woman scorn 
For that dark night when you were born." 

THE LOVABLENESS OF GIRLS 

There is a pretty old Sanskrit legend to the effect that, 
after making man, the Creator took the rotundity of the 
moon, the curves of the creeper, the clinging of tendrils, 
the bloom of the flowers, the lightness of leaves, the taper- 
ing of the elephant's tusk, the glances of the deer, the joy- 
ous gayety of the sunbeams, the weeping of the clouds, the 



THE PINNACLE OF GIRLHOOD 473 

fickleness of the winds, the timidity of the hare, the vanity 
of the peacock, the softness of the parrot's bosom, the 
sweetness of honey, the cruelty of the tiger, the soft glow 
of fire, the coldness of the snows, and the chattering of the 
jays, and made woman, and presented her to man. 

After three days the man came and said to the Almighty : 
" This woman you have given me chatters constantly, never 
leaves me alone, requires much attention, takes all my time, 
cries about nothing and is always idle. I want you to take 
her back." So the Almighty took her back. But pretty 
soon the man came again and said : " She used to dance 
and sing, and she looked at me out of the corner of her 
eye, and she loved to play, she clung to me when she was 
afraid, her laughter was like music, and she was beautiful 
to look upon. Give her back to me again." So the Al- 
mighty gave her to him again. But three days later he 
brought her back again, and asked the Almighty to keep 
her. " No," said the Lord, " you will not live with her, 
and you cannot live without her. You have got to get 
along the best you can." 

This amusing narrative suggests how increasingly attrac- 
tive the subject of girls, in their mystery, their changeful- 
ness and their varied charm, is bound to be to a man as 
long as he lives. 

Just how much a fine girl can mean to a boy no girl ever 
fully knows, because she has not been a boy. Perhaps I 
can partly explain it in this way. Did you ever think of 
it that it is possible for one woman to sum up all that true 
womanhood means, but that it is not possible for a man to 
sum up all that manhood means ? Now I do not know why 
it is so, but to a man, at least, it is true. A boy may like 
you in such a way that he shall see the whole of womanhood 



474 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

in you. You shall be to him, as a very wise man has said, 
the flower in the crannied wall, by knowing and loving 
which he knows God and man." Whatever you praise is 
to him praiseworthy and particularly whatever you praise 
in him. He shall not be able to see anything worthy be- 
yond you. Now you may not be able to keep that perfect 
ideal for him always, but it is what he starts with when 
he begins to love you, and some women have retained it, 
as the wife of Buffon did, to whom he said when dying, 
" In thine eyes, my beloved, I have seen the Eternal." If 
you do mean or may mean so much as all this to some one 
some day, you can see that it is a tremendous thing to be a 
beloved woman. 

SUGGESTIONS BY WHICH A BOY MAY JUDGE THE 
WORTH OF A GIRL 

How well does she look before breakfast? 
Can she cook anything but fudge? 
Can she walk a mile without being tired out ? 
How does her little sister like her? 
Does she make life easier for her mother? 
How much money does it take to make her pleasant? 
Did you ever hear her praise another girl who was pretty? 
After you have left her do you feel as if you were more of a 
man, or less? 



LXIII 
TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE 

WHEN John Wesley was riding his horse " Timothy " 
through the Cumberlands one day he suddenly saw a 
sight that caused him to rein in his horse and stop and 
stare. 

It was a flower-bed in front of a little house. 

He dismounted, tied his horse to the fence and went in- 
side. That night he wrote in his diary : " He is small and 
lame, but he loves flowers and his soul is near to God." 

The potter's name was Josiah Wedgwood. He had be- 
gun life molding jugs for brewers ; before he was through 
he was the best maker of beautiful china in the world. He 
was once a poor, lame and sickly lad, the youngest of thir- 
teen children; he ended, loved, honored and wealthy — the 
richest man in England who had made his own fortune. 

When he was still a homely, unknown lad, a rich, lovely 
and educated girl fell in love with him. Why, we cannot 
say. She saw something in him that others did not see. 
Sarah's father stormed, as might have been expected. The 
young people were persistent. Finally the father told Jo- 
siah that he could have Sarah when he could match her 
dowry — fifty thousand dollars. Sarah whispered, " You 
can do it, Josiah." He worked for ten years; he educated 
himself; he became successful; he matched the dowry — 
and so Josiah and Sarah were married, and lived happily 
ever after. 

475 



476 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Together they dreamed dreams and made their dreams 
come true. They dreamed of making china that should 
be as beautiful as the masterpieces of antiquity; and to-day 
if you own a piece of Wedgwood it is worth its weight in 
gold. They dreamed of a village where they should live 
with their workmen in cottages covered with flowers, and 
they built the colony of Etruria. They dreamed of what 
their little daughter should be; and she became the mother 
of Charles Darwin. 

After they had grown old together, Josiah wrote of 
Sarah : " She prompted and inspired me, and without her 
faith in me I should have been a failure." 

THE STORY OF "UNCLE JOHN" BRASHEAR 

" Uncle John " Brashear is the most lovable man in 
Pittsburgh. Street-car motormen and conductors spy the 
old gentleman a block away and hold up traffic for the sake 
of getting him for a passenger. The governor of the State 
selected him to go to the Panama exposition as Pennsyl- 
vania's most distinguished citizen. He is a mechanic, the 
most skillful maker of optical instruments in the world. 

When he was a boy he worked in the rolling-mills. His 
grandfather used to take him out in the backyard evenings 
and show him the constellations. He grew to love and 
study them. At twenty-two he married Phcebe Stewart, 
and she and he, in their poverty, built their home after work- 
ing hours with their own hands in the moonlight. Phcebe 
loved the stars too, and she loved John Brashear. 

As soon as the home was done they built a little work- 
shop in the yard and there together evenings they ground 
out a five-inch lens, and when they got it mounted they 



TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE 477 

stuck it out of a hole in their attic roof and invited their 
neighbors to share the evening heavens with them. 

After that they aspired to a twelve-inch lens, but just as 
they got it done, it broke. And, says Merle Crowell, who 
tells the story, " the heart of Brashear almost broke with 
it." But the next night when he came home from the mill 
he found the fire under the boiler, steam up, and a fresh 
piece of glass in the lathe. 

" We'll make a new one, dear — and better ! " she said. 

They did. 

Many years of this comradely work passed away, and 
then the loyal wife died. But she had pointed the way to 
a place beyond the constellations, and John Brashear, 
broken-hearted but hopeful, placed on her grave this verse: 

" We have loved the stars too kindly 
To be fearful of the night." 

THE STORY OF GEORGE HERBERT 

Two hundred and fifty years ago Izaak Walton, the im- 
mortal fisherman, wrote down, " chiefly to please himself," 
the love-story of George Herbert and Jane Danvers. 
George Herbert was a courtier who had decided to become 
a clergyman, and who, in accepting his first small parish, 
decided to seek a wife. The father of nine daughters, 
Charles Danvers, thought so highly of him that he often 
and publicly declared that George Herbert might have any 
one of his daughters, " but rather his daughter Jane than 
any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter." The 
shrewd father had said as much to the two young people, 
so that Herbert was fairly prepared to like her, and as 
for Jane, she " fell in love with Mr. Herbert unseen." 



478 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

It was not until after the father's untimely death that 
some friends procured their meeting, " at which time," says 
Walton eloquently, " a mutual affection entered their hearts, 
as a conqueror enters into a surprised city, and love having 
got such possession, governed and made there such laws 
as neither party was able to resist; insomuch that she 
changed her name into Herbert the third day after this first 
interview. This haste might in others be thought a love- 
phrensy, or worse; but it was not, for they had wooed so 
like princes; for the eternal Lover of Mankind made them 
so happy in each other's mutual and equal affection and 
compliance, indeed so happy, that there never was any op- 
position between them, unless it were a contest which should 
most incline to a compliance with the other's desires. This 
mutual content, and love, and joy, did receive a daily aug- 
mentation, by such daily obligingness to each other, as still 
added new affluences to the former fulness of those divine 
souls as was only improvable in heaven, where they now en- 
joy it." And the wise tact fulness of her husband won such 
grace for his bride that " love followed her in all places 
as inseparably as shadows follow substances in sunshine." 
After his early death she outlived him for thirty years, say- 
ing ever of her early love, " That name must live in my 
memory, till I put off mortality." 

" Oh, what a beautiful marriage!" exclaims a lovesick 
girl as she rises with streaming eyes from reading a senti- 
mental story. " Why can't I have a lover like that ? " 
Agnes Gilbert has answered the question. " You cannot 
hope for a beautiful marriage unless you are beautiful your- 
self. Any relationship is made by the people who are in 
it." It means giving as well as receiving. And it takes 
two to make a marriage. 



TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE 479 

THE STORY OF SYLVIA 

Sylvia was a girl from the hill country of New England. 
She came from a large family and they were very poor. 
While she was still trying to struggle through school a col- 
lege student fell in love with her and asked her to marry 
him. She loved him dearly, but she was wise and she 
thought it over carefully. He was brilliant and had a large 
future before him. Some day he would occupy a high sta- 
tion which it would take a noble woman to grace, and he 
would some day be a man whose mind and heart would not 
be content with a girl as ignorant and simple as she. It 
seemed prudent that she should give him up. But she 
loved him too much, and she saw just one chance for hap- 
piness. And so one day she sat down with him and told 
him frankly how she felt. If she should marry him she 
wished to be the companion not of the student of to-day but 
of the successful man twenty years in the future. Would 
he be patient with her while she kept on studying? Would 
he be content to have her always a student? I question 
whether he was wise enough then to see what she was driv- 
ing at, but he loved her, and he consented. 

During the years when they were striving to make a home 
it sometimes must have seemed hard to him that he should 
be asked to use their little store of money for lessons and 
studies. Still he tried to be loyal, and in time he had his 
reward. For as the years rolled by he did come to high 
positions, positions where he would have been ashamed to 
have had the little country girl by his side, and as his mind 
grew, with experience and success, she would have made a 
sorry sort of companion for him had she remained a mere 
drudge. But she was now a queenly woman ; there was no 



4 8o THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

height that he ever reached where she was not beckoning 
still beyond, and few knew that the charming hostess and 
rich-minded woman had once been a girl from the hill coun- 
try, who saw love as a challenge and who won it and made 
it her lifelong possession by patient self -development. 

THE STORY OF BOB 

There was once a young man known as Bob. Bob was 
one of these self-made men. When he was already a suc- 
cessful young business man he fell in love with Marjorie, 
just home from Bryn Mawr. He admired her beauty and 
her bright mind, and he was glad to give her a home that 
made a lovely background for her lovely nature. A year 
or two after they were married Bob discovered that he had 
married a " new woman." This is not a joke, and it was 
not a joke to Bob. Bob soon saw that Marjorie's college 
chums, that Marjorie's thoughts, that Marjorie's ideals all 
lived in a world that he knew nothing about. In such a case 
most young men fill their minds with business, try to be 
pleasant at home, but cease to be companions to their wives. 
Bob frankly recognized that Marjorie represented a higher 
level than he did ; and that he had to climb if he wished 
ever to keep in sight of her. She would always love him, 
but she would not respect him unless he did so. This situa- 
tion nowadays is more common than that of Sylvia which I 
have been telling you of, for girls are taking culture seri- 
ously and the average educated girl to-day knows more than 
the average educated boy. 

So the self-made Bob started out to make himself over, 
and as he had been a success in one way of life so he finally 
became a success in another. He did not take lessons of 
Marjorie; indeed he did not quite dare to tell her he was 



TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE 481 

trying to catch up with her; they did not even study to- 
gether. But Bob managed to read some of the books that 
he found Marjorie was reading; he hunted up courses that 
he thought were self -improving — I think he kept the Chau- 
tauqua reading-course concealed in his office ; he read fewer 
newspapers and more monthly reviews; he began to talk 
with wiser men ; he gave his attention to the movements that 
Marjorie was working in, and he became that rare thing 
to-day, an interesting man. He never fully appreciated his 
own success; he always complained of his lack of a college 
education, and insisted on one for each of his children ; he 
always adored and looked up to his wife. And she? — 
well, this is not a fairy tale, but she was a wise as well as 
an educated woman, and she helped him when she saw 
his aim in ways he never knew, and she was always proud 
of him. He saved the noblest part of his wife's nature for 
himself by climbing to its level. 

These are some of the new ways in which people earn a 
beautiful marriage. 



LXIV 

A GOOD TURN DAILY 

T^OT long ago the Harvard Lampoon had a skit on the 
"good turns" that Boy Scouts are supposed to do 
daily. It is as follows : 

A FEW GOOD TURNS 

i. Rudolph Rumble, crossing Harvard Bridge, saw an 
old man's hat blow off in front of an auto. Running in 
front of the machine, Rudolph kicked the hat into the river, 
saving it from being crushed beneath the wheels. 

2. Bobbie Butt noticed a young negro standing on the 
third-story ledge of a building, washing windows, and called 
to him to look out. The negro turned, fell, and broke his 
leg. Had he not been warned he would, undoubtedly, have 
broken his neck. 

3. Harry Wrinkle perceived an infant playing about the 
front steps of a large apartment house. He took the child 
to the police station and locked it up, where the grateful 
mother found it three days later. The child might other- 
wise have strayed away, causing the parents hours of need- 
less anxiety. 

4. Willie Wobble noticed a grocery horse standing beside 
the curb, perspiring freely. He unhitched the animal, led 
it home, and gave it a cool witch-hazel sponge bath, followed 
by a good meal of mashed potatoes. The owner may get 
his horse by going out to Willie's in South Weymouth. 

482 



A GOOD TURN DAILY 483 

5. Clarence Cod saw an elderly lady about to step on the 
hem of her dress at the entrance to the subway. Rushing to 
her, he pushed her over on her back, thereby in all proba- 
bility saving her a nasty fall down-stairs. 

6. Phreddie Phutt perceived a laborer sitting on a bale 
of straw, smoking a pipe. With great presence of mind he 
seized a bucket of water and wet down both the man and 
the straw thoroughly, thus allowing the honest fellow to 
enjoy his pipe without further risk of fire. 

And yet while one laughs at these examples of misplaced 
zeal, he realizes that they are hardly what a Scout would do 
in real life, because one of the activities of Scouting is that 
it teaches a boy how not to make a fool of himself. 

REAL GOOD TURNS 

I have looked over with much interest records that have 
come to the national headquarters of " good turns " that 
have been done by troops of the Boy Scouts. Here are 
some of the items: 

Decorated the graves of old soldiers 

Picked up glass along the shore 

Hunted for several lost children 

Made a cinder sidewalk eighty feet long 

Tended the rectory garden 

Chopped a cord of wood for a poor widow 

Took a choking boy to a doctor 

Did the chores for a woman with a sick husband 

Cleaned up the city 

Paid the doctor's bill of a sick Scout 

Extinguished forest fires 

Took care of the bon-fires on clean-up day 

Led in Sane Fourth celebrations 

Took charge of a church picnic 



484 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Distributed grain to the birds during a hard winter 
Cared for boats in a storm 
Entered an English sparrow war 

Some of these were not very difficult or perhaps espe- 
cially praiseworthy, because they were done in the enthu- 
siasm of the crowd, but the following are a few individual 
exploits for which Scout activities were a distinct prepara- 
tion, and they were done by boys when alone : 

Luther Hansen, age thirteen, a tenderfoot scout of Troop 
I, Story City, Iowa, saved a boy from drowning in the Des 
Moines River by walking twelve feet along the bottom in 
five and one-half feet of water, after the boy whom he 
was rescuing pushed him under and held him there. He 
was only four feet nine inches tall, so the water was well 
over his head. _ 

Charles H. and Horace Krause, aged fifteen and thirteen 
respectively, first class scouts of Troop 32, St. Louis, Mo., 
went to the rescue of the crew of a capsized sailboat on 
Lake Erie. They had two younger boys in their own boat 
and were rowing safely under the lee of a high cliff when 
they saw the duck boat turn turtle a mile out in the lake. 
There was no time to land the little boys, and the three men 
from the sailboat made seven in their own small skiff, but 
they brought all safely to shore by superb seamanship. 

Harvey Kiederling, of Plainfield, N. J., a thirteen-year- 
old scout in Troop 11, went under a heavy team of rearing 
horses in a circus parade to carry a little child to safety. 
He escaped death by only a fraction of a second. 

In Gatun Lake, on the Panama Canal, tenderfoot scout 
George Summers Brownell dove for a three-year-old child 
who had toddled down the face of the dam. He was fully 



A GOOD TURN DAILY 485 

dressed and the water was twenty feet deep, but he made 
the rescue. Brownell was thirteen years old. 

In Montclair, New Jersey, Scouts have arranged to help 
day nurseries by going to play with the little tots whose 
mothers have had to leave them there while away at work 
for the day. You can appreciate what that means in the 
sacrifice of playtime and in subjection to the ridicule of un- 
sympathetic companions who are not Scouts. 

In Philadelphia is a crossing watchman who is crippled, 
having but one leg. Every evening he is required to put a 
lighted lamp in a signal on a high post, and to take it down 
in the morning — a difficult and risky task for him. A 
little Scout who serves milk for his uncle passes that way 
at six o'clock every morning. He noticed the man's diffi- 
culty, and at once made it his business to take down the 
lamp daily, saying simply that it was his duty because he 
was a Scout. 

A BIG GOOD TURN IN A SMALL PLACE 

Why does a man need to get into a big place to do a fine 
piece of work? 

I want to tell you about a fighting parson. I met him in 
western Indiana a few days ago. His name is McDonald. 
He comes from a village whose name sounds like that of a 
sleeping-car — Maroa, 111. He is a muscular young Chris- 
tian, and I can well imagine him as the gymnasium teacher 
of the boys in his church. But the amazing fact is that 
there should be any gymnasium in his church, for there are 
but one thousand two hundred people in Maroa, and the 
town has three churches. That is not the kind of a place 
that usually supports gymnasiums. 



486 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

There wasn't any till he came. There wasn't anything 
else to make Maroa any different from ten thousand other 
little villages, where the churches are chiefly busy in keep- 
ing a running fight with each other, and letting the social 
and educational needs of the young people be forgotten — 
till McDonald came. There were village dances that were 
a disgrace, there was a moving-picture show that was as 
bad, and the schools were very poor. The churches had 
weakened themselves so much by quarreling that there 
wasn't very much left of them but a sour look. 

Then came McDonald. He was fresh from New York 
City, where he had had some experience in trying to uplift 
foreigners, and he had an idea that some of the same things 
would work among rural Americans. His friends discour- 
aged him, and told him that Maroa did not offer even a 
chance. 

About the first thing he did was to start a cooking-school 
for girls and some gymnastics for boys. He went over to 
the dancing-club and asked them to come over to his church 
to learn folk-dancing. The night after he started his class 
there was nobody left at the club but the president, secre- 
tary, and the janitor. The second night there was no- 
body but the president and the janitor, and the third night 
the janitor was left alone. Then he went over to see the 
picture-show man, and he told him that if he would clean 
up his pictures and leave out his vaudeville, he would an- 
nounce his entertainments in his prayer-meetings, and urge 
his people to attend. He did so, but when a new pro- 
prietor scoffed at the parson and went back to old 
ways, McDonald bought a second-hand machine, gave free 
shows, and drove the other man out of town. He got hold 



A GOOD TURN DAILY 487 

of the suspicious farmers by opening a rest-room for their 
wives and a suitable play-hour for their children. 

He has led in a movement to lay I don't know how many 
rods of sidewalk, and he is helping the people to get a new 
township high school, to which he expects to transfer his 
cooking school. The picture-show has been succeeded by a 
lecture course and a series of concerts. All these things 
have been paid for by the people, and as for the other two 
churches, they also are awake and flourishing, and they have 
new pastors, who work heartily with McDonald. 

I heard McDonald tell his story to three hundred young 
ministers who had gathered in a conference to discuss how 
they could meet the country problem. Another speaker was 
a Methodist presiding elder. One sentence he uttered was 
this: 

" Don't be worrying for fear you won't be assigned to a 
two thousand place. Try to do two-thousand-dollar work 
in the place where you are." That is what J. N. McDon- 
ald is doing in Maroa. 

No concern is so large that this spirit may not distinguish 
itself. There was a boy named John, the son of a proof- 
reader, who was an apprentice in a great newspaper office. 
When he died suddenly last summer this was what was said 
about him by that paper in an editorial : 

OUR BOY JOHN 

John Drinard was only 15 and an apprentice boy in The 
News Leader composing-room. It was his business to as- 
semble the " takes " from the linotype machines, to " pull " 
the proofs and to set some of the heads. As men measure 
industrial achievements, little John was a tiny cog in a 



488 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

great, high-pressure machine. Yet there is not a man on 
the staff of The News Leader who does not feel that the 
plant runs less smoothly and less happily this afternoon be- 
cause our little apprentice boy met his death yesterday in a 
treacherous hole in Swift creek. 

The real measure of a man is not what he does but how 
he does it. In the great democracy of Heaven, the prince 
outranks the pauper only when his heart is purer, his pur- 
pose higher and his devotion greater. The man who turns 
a little wheel with faith and zeal and gives his best to each 
day's task is greater far than he who leads an army forth 
and fails to consecrate his all to his appointed work. And 
so it was our little boy John ranked high. He was his 
father's son in energy, trustworthiness and mind. He was 
devoted to the glorious craft he had begun and he per- 
formed the humblest task with patience never weary and 
with enthusiasm that never flagged. Had he lived, he 
would have been a great printer. 

But we loved John in The News Leader office not less 
for what he was than for what he promised to be. We 
loved him, above all else, because he never lost his smile. 
Whether you saw him in the early morning, while the men 
were waiting for the daily grind to begin, or whether you 
saw him ink-besmeared, as he stood at his case in the last, 
nerve-racking rush before press-time, John had always a 
smile — the smile of youth unsullied and of faith unbroken. 
Sometimes that smile lit up the busy room where thirty men 
were toiling, sometimes it reached where little John would 
never think and soothed a pang his own short life had not 
experienced. 

He is smiling yet, is our little boy John, and heaven is 
brighter for that smile! 



A GOOD TURN DAILY 489 

Edward Carpenter says: 

" It is not a little thing, you — wherever you are — following 
the plow, or clinging with your feet to the wet rigging, or nursing 
your baby through the long day when your husband is absent, or 
preparing supper for his return — 

In whose faithful use, through long patient exercise, the chan- 
nels have become clean, 

It is not a little thing that by such a life your face should be- 
come as a lantern of strength to men; 

That wherever you go they should rise up stronger to the bat- 
tle, and go forth with good courage. 

Nay, it is very great." 

GOODNESS IS WHAT MAKES GOOD 

" We do not naturally think of goodness as having much 
of a lunge to it," Gerald Stanley Lee says. " It is tired- 
looking and discouraged, and pulls back gently and kindly." 
He says it appears to consist mostly of Things for People 
Not to Be, and Things for People Not to Do. But as for 
himself he adds : " When I speak of goodness I do not 
mean a good-looking act, but an act that makes good." 

We make mistakes about the word, character. I suppose 
most of us think our character to be something like a ther- 
mometer-bulb, a shifting index that goes up and down with 
our ideals. If we feel noble, then character bobs up; if 
we feel ignoble, it sinks down. No such thing. Character 
is constant. Character is the way one habitually acts. 
One's employer, says Arthur Holmes, Dean of Pennsylvania 
State College, wants to know, not how the employee feels 
toward goodness, but " how he re-acts to the beginning 
whistle, to a novel piece of work, or an extra pile of cor- 
respondence; whether these give him a headache, or back- 
ache, or periods of peevishness, or act as stimuli to tap new 



490 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

sources of energy and make him buckle down to work with 
extraordinary vigor." 

The good-turn idea has this value that it measures each 
day not by what one meant to do but by what one got done. 



LXV 

THE LARGER PATRIOTISM 

•IpIELD MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS, who gave his 
■*■ life in the early months of the war, once reminded his 
young readers of the occasion in English history when a 
British admiral found himself facing the whole Dutch fleet 
with but two ships. He measured the depth of the sea be- 
neath his ship and finding that it was not enough to cover 
the mast on which waved the Union Jack he simply told his 
sailors that, when their ship had gone down, the British flag 
would still be flying above their graves ! " What that ad- 
miral meant to say was that it did not matter what hap- 
pened to themselves so long as their country, of which that 
flag was the emblem, was safe. I should like to think that 
every boy and girl in the Empire looked upon our flag in the 
same light as did that British admiral." 

This was the spirit that animated Rupert Brooke, the 
young English poet who gave his life in the Dardanelles. 
The poem in which he expressed his passion to enrich his 
native land is no doubt the finest literary masterpiece that 
has come out of the Great War. Though it is already being 
quoted everywhere, I would not like to have my book printed 
without seeing it included in its pages : 

" If I should die, think only this of me : 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 
That is forever England. There shall be 
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 

491 



492 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 
Gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 

A body of England's breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home. 

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; 
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven." 

Now the spirit of the patriotism of war is the instinct 
to give, and not to get. The one thing in war, with all its 
horror and bloodshed, that at all lifts it above the smiling 
days of peace is that in the merry thrill of danger men for- 
get their money-grubbing and their petty pleasures and 
selfish indulgences and go forth to do and dare for others. 

THE LOYALIST WHO SHARES 

The most notable change in our ideals of patriotism is 
that produced of late by our realizing that the best kind of 
country to live in is not the one where each man has his 
rights but where each man lives for the rights of others. 
A few years ago a book of counsel like this would have 
been full of advice to tell you how to get your share. This 
book dwells upon the importance of your learning how to 
give your share. 

In this country things are your own, and yet they are 
not wholly your own. As my friend Dr. Charles Laugh- 
inghouse says : " A dairyman's cows are his own, but in 
civilized communities he is not permitted to sell infected 
milk to endanger the life and health of his neighbor's chil- 
dren. A butcher's meat is his own, but in municipalities 





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THE LARGER PATRIOTISM 493 

that are intelligently governed it cannot be placed on the 
market for human food if it be diseased, or unsafe or unfit 
to eat. A manufacturer's money is his own, but in civilized 
countries he is not permitted to use it for the purchase of 
the cheaper labor of the undeveloped child, even though the 
child's parents are willing to sell. So it is that a man can- 
not waste his own child, or his neighbor's child, nor claim 
any right or power or property that hurts or hinders the ag- 
gregate development and safety of his community. We 
hear enough of the rights of men. Let us hear more of 
their duties. From rights to duties should be our slogan." 

Here are the fields where American patriotism is to be 
shown. The best things our War Department has ever 
done were not to train our army but to deepen the Missis- 
sippi, to dig the Panama Canal, to clean up the Canal Zone 
and to make life livable in the tropics by discovering how to 
prevent and cure typhoid and yellow fever. General 
Goethals and General Gorgas are patriots in peace just as 
truly as were Generals Grant and Meade in war, and Doctor 
Walter Reed and Jane Addams and O. H. Benson are just 
as much national benefactors as if they had enlisted in the 
army. 

" God end War ! But when brute War is ended, 
Yet there shall be many a noble soldier, 
Many a noble battle worth the winning, 
Many a hopeless battle worth the losing, 

Life is battle, 
Life is battle, even to the sunset." 

TWO OF THE MODERN PATRIOTS 

Down in the hookworm district of North Carolina the 
other day I happened across one of these new type of patriots 
in the person of a country doctor. I rode with him two 



494 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

days for many miles on his rounds past the log cabins and 
amongst the oaks and cotton fields. This physician had 
touched almost every field of human life in his neighborhood 
with blessing. He had once kept the small-pox out of the 
county by going about continuously for six weeks day and 
night inoculating everybody. He had almost abolished 
typhoid and malaria by making immunizing and the pre- 
ventive use of quinine popular. He had asked to be the 
school physician in the local Teachers' Training School, so 
that he might send out two hundred young women every 
summer into the rural regions, enthusiastic with ideals of 
cleanliness and health. He had secured a whole-time health 
officer. He had led a movement for a free county hospital. 
He had helped built a fine office block in town, had been a 
director of the building and loan society, had headed the 
movement for good roads, had canvassed the whole county 
in the interest of bonds for better schools. " I work from 
seven in the morning to half past twelve at night,", said this 
modern patriot to me, " and I never get tired, because I find 
so many interesting things to do in the world." It is the 
leaven of a small group of men like Dr. Charles Laughing- 
house that is making the New South. 

Richard Watson Gilder, the poet and the quiet and un- 
selfish worker for the welfare of New York City, was such a 
patriot. He once wrote a poem of the larger patriotism 
that in thought at least is as beautiful as the sonnet by 
Rupert Brooke: 

" 'Twas said : * When roll of drum and battle s roar 
Shall cease upon the earth, Oh, then no more 
The deed, the race, of heroes in the land.' 
But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand 
Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong 



THE LARGER PATRIOTISM 495 

That had its victims crushed through ages long; 

Some woman set her pale and quivering face, 

Firm as a rock, against a man's disgrace; 

A little child suffered in silence lest 

His savage pain should wound a mother's breast; 

Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down 

And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown ; 

A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws, 

Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause; 

And one to the pest his little young body gave 

That he a thousand thousand lives might save." 

There is a real danger here at this point. I listened last 
summer to a powerful lecture by a great pacifist. He 
argued that America does not need preparedness. His 
last sentence, impressively spoken, was : " Go back home 
and thank God that America is adequately prepared.'' In 
one sense he was right, but there was another sense in which 
many of the audience took it. " Back home, back to my 
easy-chair and pipe, my business and my pleasures. Let me 
forget the European War, or that men ever die for anything. 
Any life, particularly mine, is worth the whole of Mexico. 
I will trust in God, and let Teddy and the regular army that 
we hire go out and fight. If a war should really come I 
will stay back home, marry the soldier's widow and take 
over his business. Back home, and thank God." This is 
the ignoble side of pacifism. There are many ways, even 
beside the army and navy, in which America is unprepared, 
and True Preparedness is the patriotism of the true 
twentieth-century American. 

NEW FIELDS FOR PATRIOTISM 

Just at this time you hear everybody talking about 
" Americanism " and what a shame it is to be a " hyphen- 



496 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

ated " person. But everything that is said seems to be 
aimed at somebody else. It is the poor lone foreigner at 
whom all fingers are pointed. He is to become American 
and avoid the hyphen, and we are to watch him do it. 
He, in his poverty and ignorance and without a helping hand 
from us who are rich and wise and who have always been 
here, has the tremendous job of Americanizing himself to 
do all alone. Might it not be proper to inquire if " Ameri- 
canism " does not properly consist to some extent in select- 
ing at least one alien to be good to, one hyphenated stranger 
to help? That is where patriotism would appear to begin 
at home. Is there possibly one alien boy or girl in your 
school to whom you could show patriotism as well as friend- 
ship? 

Another field is that of politics. 

Several times during the past few years we have watched 
men come on to positions of influence who seemed to show 
hopes of becoming national leaders. They were usually 
young, had fine records, and had expressed noble sentiments, 
At once people began to name them for the presidency. 
The country was waiting for a man who stood on his own 
feet, knew his own mind and was ready to lead. Just as 
they were stepping out into the limelight, they flinched, they 
paltered, they refused to say the brave word, that meant 
temporary misunderstanding, but, as we see it now, glorious 
commandership. Their names are already being forgot- 
ten. They did not see that what looked like a forlorn 
hope, was the vanguard of the whole Republic. They did 
not know that the reason men trusted them at all was be- 
cause they thought they could be trusted to lead the nation 
all the way into the light. 




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LXVI 

WORLD BROTHERHOOD 

" Where is the true man's fatherland ? 
Is it where he by chance is born? 
Doth not the yearning spirit scorn 
In such scant borders to be spanned? 
Oh, yes, his fatherland must be 
As the blue heaven, wide and free ! 

" Where'er a human heart doth wear 
Joy's myrtle wreath or sorrow's gyves, 
Where'er a human spirit strives 
After a life more true and fair, 
There is the true man's birthplace grand, 
His is a world-wide fatherland ! 

"Where'er a single slave doth pine, 
Where'er one man may help another — 
Thank God for such a birthright, brother — 
That spot of earth is thine and mine! 
There is the true man's birthplace grand, 
His is a world-wide fatherland ! " 

THESE stirring lines of Lowell's lift us still higher in 
our study of patriotism, and remind us that there is a 
loyalty larger than loyalty to our country, namely, loyalty to 
our world. How shall we learn more of this world-loyalty ? 
One of the best ways for us to get a world viewpoint is 
to read more history, and more impartial history. I was 
brought up, as some of you my readers were, to hate Eng- 

497 



498 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

land, our mother country, and to believe that in all her re- 
lations with our nation she was always cruel and wrong and 
.we were always right and noble. The English children 
to-day are given a broader outlook than this. They are 
frankly taught that England made many mistakes in her 
treatment of her American colonies. s A Canadian writer 
describes one of these school-books. 

"We have, first, George III described as 'ignorant, ob- 
stinate and arbitrary/ and it is further asserted that * he 
gained power over Parliament by wholesale bribery, opposed 
all justice to Ireland, supported the slave trade, and lost the 
American colonies/ Farther on, the law restraining the 
American colonists from trading with France and Spain is 
denounced as * foolish,' and the attempt of the British gov- 
ernment to raise money from the colonists by means of the 
Stamp Act is sharply condemned, the assertion being made 
that ' the colonists would have given the money willingly if 
they had levied it themselves.' Just here it is mentioned, 
incidentally, that the king had his first attack of insanity 
during this year — a fact which the teacher can associate 
with the king's ambition for despotic power. 

" And so on throughout the whole miserable story of the 
war the blame is thrown upon the king and his supporters. 
Of Washington it is said that ' he clung to union with 
England till this was no longer possible/ and that 
throughout the war he remained calm and self-reliant, 
in defeat as in success, and sacrificed everything for the 
good of his troops and the freedom of his country.' The 
Congress of 1776 is said to have been Med by great and 
earnest men ' into formulating the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Of the Colonist fighters it is said that at Bunker 
Hill ' they proved triumphantly that the Yankees were no 



WORLD BROTHERHOOD 499 

cowards.' The account of the war concludes as follows: 
' England is proud of the powerful nation which sprang up 
from her shores.' 

" Now," adds this Canadian, " ought not we Americans to 
be equally willing to own that all the wrong was not on 
Great Britain's side ? 

" The American teacher should also show that not all the 
promoters of the Revolution were unselfish, noble men, like 
Washington and John Adams. Samuel Adams, for in- 
stance, was at best a doubtful character, and Patrick 
Henry, who, in denouncing George III, declaimed so elo- 
quently, ' Give me liberty or give me death,' had so little 
genuine appreciation of the right of liberty for others as 
well as for himself that he was at that very moment the 
owner of many slaves — some say two hundred — on his 
Virginian plantation. Then, too, the conduct of the patriots 
was in some cases inexcusably violent, however these of- 
fenses may be ignored, glossed over, or even glorified, by 
many of the writers of American school histories. The 
dumping of the tea into Boston harbor was somewhat of an 
outrage — it was rather rowdyism than patriotism, as was 
also the conduct of Boston citizens that provoked the so- 
called Boston massacre by a few British soldiers, who were 
successfully defended in the Boston courts by John Adams 
as having acted in self-defense under extraordinary provo- 
cation. Finally, the treatment of the loyalists by the pa- 
triots, though in part retaliatory, was in many cases unpro- 
voked and unjustifiably harsh." 

As for the War of 1812, this wise writer continues: 
" Canadian teachers should remember, too, that the Ameri- 
can invasion of Canada was not positively indicative of wan- 
ton hostility against Canadians as such, but was under- 



500 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

taken because this was the most convenient point in which to 
strike Great Britain, and because, furthermore, some Ameri- 
cans believed, however wrongly, that Canadians were op- 
pressed by Great Britain, and would welcome assistance to 
escape from under the yoke. And American teachers, on 
the other hand, should show that however Great Britain 
across the seas had offended their forefathers, the Canadians 
had given no provocation to justify invasion of their land 
and destruction of their homes. Americans, too, who feel 
angered at the pillage of Washington and Baltimore, ought 
to keep in mind that that was an act of retaliation for the 
pillage of the Canadian towns of Niagara and Toronto by 
American troops." 

" Such teaching," he concludes truly, " from American 
teachers on the one side, and Canadian teachers on the other, 
would promote sympathy and toleration between the two 
peoples, and help to render war impossible in the future." 

WHAT SOUTH AMERICA TEACHES US 

There are other countries than our own who have caught 
clearer sight of this international spirit than have we. 

Did you ever read the story of the Christ of the Andes? 
Very likely. But it cannot be told too often. 

Argentina and Chile had a perpetual quarrel over the 
boundary line between them that curves up and down and 
around the heights of the lofty Andes that separate them. 
They were about to go to war about the matter again when 
Bishop Benavente of Argentina and Bishop Java of Chile 
and the women of both countries protested, and the whole 
affair was left to the king of England to arbitrate. 

When peace was settled the question arose as to what they 
should do with their now useless cannon and warships and 



WORLD BROTHERHOOD 501 

forts. They sold their ships for freighters, they sent their 
soldiers home to work in the fields and mines and they 
spent the money that had been used in maintaining their 
fortifications in making better roads and safer harbors. 

In the meantime a beautiful statue of the Christ had been 
made by the young sculptor Mateo Alonso from bronze 
cannon. One hundred thousand dollars was raised, mostly 
by the women of the two countries, to pay for this statue. 
The leading part in this work was undertaken by Senora 
Angela de Oliviera Cezar de Costa. On the 28th of May, 
1903, the very day the treaty of peace was signed, Senora de 
Costa invited the President of Argentina and General Montt, 
the representative of the President of Chile, to come to the 
yard of a large college in Argentina to inspect the great 
statue. While they were there she asked of them and se- 
cured permission to have it placed on the highest accessible 
pinnacle of the Andes, on one of the disputed boundary 
lines. 

As soon as winter was over the difficult task was begun 
of carrying the heavy bronze up the mountain. Appropri- 
ately, after it had gone where engines could not take it 
further, it was placed on gun-carriages. Where the road 
became dangerous the people themselves took the ropes and 
helped, for fear the precious statue might fall and break. 

" There was great joy," says Anna P. Hannum, from 
whom I get this story, " on the day when the statue was 
finally ready in its place. Hundreds of people toiled up the 
steep road the night before, to be ready for the hymns and 
prayers when the statue should be uncovered. The Ar- 
gentines camped on the Chilian side of the boundary, and 
the Chilians on the Argentine side, to show their friend- 
ship and good will. When the statue was at last all ready 



502 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

to be seen, there was a great burst of music and firing of 
guns. The sound echoed far over the mountains and 
through the valleys, where all the people could hear and 
add their voices to the chorus. 

" Then every one waited in breathless silence while the 
cover was taken off, and the lovely face of Christ looked at 
them, seeming to say again, as of old, ' Blessed are the 
Peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.' 
In the hearts of those hundreds of people the angels sang 
again their chorus of ' Peace on earth, good-will to men.' 

" There stands the statue now, strong and immovable 
as the Andes themselves, where Chile and Argentina may 
look and remember for ages to come. They have learned 
the lesson of peace, and these are the words they have writ- 
ten on the granite at the base of the statue : 

" ' Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than 
Argentines and Chilians break the peace which at the feet 
of Christ the Redeemer they have sworn to maintain/ " 

A great teacher, I think it was John Stuart Blackie, used 
to advise young men : " Give yourselves to three great 
things: a great cause, a great battle and a great victory." 
The greatest cause and battle for us and the greatest victory 
before us is that of International Peace, As Phillips Brooks 
once said : " It is not that the power to fight has perished : 
it is that the battle has gone up onto the higher ground and 
into the higher light. The battle is above the clouds.' ' 

It is this new battle above the clouds, the war for eternal 
peace, that some of us older men and women believe you 
younger men and women can win in your generation. 



BOOK IV 

THE AWAKENED SELF 

" You must feel the mountains above you while you work 
in your little garden." 

Phillips Brooks. 



Chapter LXVII tells how the Self awakens during the high-school 
years. 

Chapters LXVIII-LXXII suggest how to maintain one's best Self un- 
der difficulties. 

Chapters LXXIII-LXXV make special applications to real life. 

Chapter LXXVI has to do with the motive power behind all, 



LXVII 

SEVENTEEN 

" In the wet dusk, silver sweet, 
Down the violet-scented ways, 
As I moved with quiet feet, 
I was met by mighty days." 

NOBODY has ever told a boy or girl what it means to 
be sixteen or seventeen, perhaps because nobody 
knows. 

" During this period," says Frances Gulick Jewett, " girls 
find themselves more self-conscious than formerly, more 
subject to the blues, more critical of themselves and others. 
At the same time some of them giggle at everything and 
at nothing. In fact giggling is one of the symptoms. 

" Let no one worry/' she continues, " least of all the girl 
herself. The period of change will come to an end; and 
after a while she will lose whatever she may now have of 
unusual boldness or of awkwardness, of shyness, of giggling, 
or of tears. For, despite them all, even now she grows 
constantly more attractive in appearance and more winsome 
in manner. She is becoming more womanly and winsome 
every day. She cares more for the welfare of others, feels 
more sympathy for those who suffer, grows ambitious to 
excel in all lines of endeavor, is in danger of living under 
high nervous pressure, and must be protected against her- 
self by those to whom she is dearest." 

The moodiness and the sense of change are not all there 

505 



506 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

is to being sixteen. Then is it, as Hafiz said, that one feels 
possessed of " the small change of the Pleiades." At this 
time, Richard Le Gallienne tells us, " even death is not death 
in the fairy stories." Now one is ready to live for more 
than a mere " four-cornered contentment," now one has, as 
our friend William James said, " the deep consciousness of 
power to create and progress, to create new in life, to live 
for wide, free, unsullied things, which never fail and never 
can decay." 

" O singing East ! O dreaming West ! 
Ride, ride so splendidly 
To the City that is loveliest 
That never a soul shall see." 

Or as Rupert Brooke wrote before he died : 

" I would fill my mind with thoughts that will not rend. 
(O heart, I do not dare go empty-hearted) 

I'll think of Love in books, Love without end . . . 

And Song's nobility, and Wisdom holy, 
That live, we dead. I would think of a thousand things, 

Lovely and durable, and taste them slowly, 
One after one, like tasting a sweet food. 
I have need to busy my heart with quietude." 

To a girl who has caught her first vision of what life 
may mean, comes an illumination of face like that which 
came to Kilmeny the Scotch lass when she had seen the 
fairies : 

" Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, 
But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face; 
As still was her look and as still was her e'e, 
As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, 
Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. 
For Kilmeny had been, she knew not where, 
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare : 



SEVENTEEN 507 

A land of love and a land of light, 
Withouten sun, or moon, or night; 
The land of vision, it would seem, 
A still, an everlasting dream." 

WHAT SEVENTEEN MEANS TO BOYS 

Seventeen, by Booth Tarkington, is the description of a 
summer in the life of one William Sylvanus Baxter, erst 
known as " Silly Bill," but now yearning to be known by 
the terse and manly word " Baxter." He is a high-school 
youth with nothing to do during vacation except to make 
up some much-neglected mathematics. The book deals 
mostly with his eager pursuit of " Miss Pratt," adorably 
pretty and a year or so older, who has come to his native 
town to spend the summer. Miss Pratt is but lightly 
sketched, and properly so, since youth is at first usually in 
love with love rather than with a person. 

The boy Baxter is thoroughly selfish ; his mother is chiefly 
an object of convenience; his father is a repository of funds, 
and he would ever be scorning his little sister, only she will 
not allow him to do so. But in the presence of his adored 
one he is a creature not of earth ; no garments are too good 
to be worn in her sight, even his father's dress suit. He 
treasures the least thing her fingers have pressed, to touch 
her would be profanation, while to be united with her is a 
far-off vision of living alternately in a ballroom and a con- 
servatory, with nothing practical to do. 

The book is written in a high key of farce, but it is 
worth while because it does remind us of some of the things 
that happen to boys who love gay garments but forget to 
take care of them, who will do any foolish thing that gives 
a chance for exhibiting themselves, and who are so slavish 
to the codes of their own set that behavior which seems a 



508 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

matter of course to adults is to them simply unthinkable. 
Add to this the fact that many such lads expect for them- 
selves a deference such as " is supposed to be shown a 
Grand Duke visiting his Estates," and we begin to see how 
the high-school period is capable of being both the most 
hilarious and the most despairing era of human life. 

To the father of William his son seems to be " half the 
time hibernating, and the other half he behaves like — I 
don't know what." His keener mother recognizes that he 
simply represents a stage through which all the boys seem 
to be passing, of which the only thing to prophesy is that 
one cannot tell what he will do next. The little sister sums 
him up thus : " He doesn't like much of anything. He's 
seventeen years old." 

The author gives his own close insight when, after a 
peculiarly painful experience while the sorrowing lad is 
burrowing in his pillows in the dark, he reminds us that 
though the great ambition of Seventeen is to be regarded as 
a man, " Seventeen cannot always manage the little boy yet 
alive under all the coverings." And this is why Seventeen 
deserves sympathy and forbearance — because the boy is 
trying to be a man and the little boy sometimes conquers. 

THE GLORY OF BEING A PERSON 

The most important single thing that comes to one of 
high-school age is the new sense of self. You know what 
I mean. Parents used to say to you " You must " ; now 
you find yourself saying " I must." You used to believe 
what was told you about what is beautiful or true or right 
or wrong; now you find yourself judging about beauty, 
truth and right. You cannot help so judging. You are no 
longer contented with hearsay; you insist on knowing for 



SEVENTEEN 509 

yourself. This goes so far that at times you find you must 
express yourself; you may do so very well or very poorly 
— you do it most poorly when you try to show off. But at 
bottom what you are saying to the world is : "I have ar- 
rived. I must be heard." 

This is all good. You cannot be a man and always wear 
your mother's apron-strings. You cannot even be helpful 
to others until you have got a self to be useful with. To 
be a Person is the biggest thing there is, for it is to be a 
whole Man. 

Marie Bashkirtseff was a vivid, eager French girl. Once 
she was told of some one who was interested in her and de- 
sired to see her. As she passed the threshold of the room 
she breathed the prayer : " O God, make me worth see- 
ing!" 

SOME SUGGESTIONS ABOUT BEING A PERSON 

Martha Foote Crow has given me cordial permission to use part 
of her " American Country Girl's Creed," which I think is a very 
good creed for a boy as well as a girl, and whether one lives in 
the country or not. It names some of the qualities that should 
come out of being a person. 

Philosophy of life. 

The will to live, a plucky spirit, a determination to win through, 
to succeed, to take the hazard and go ahead. 

A passion for perfection, for excellence in the result; not to give 
up until the end is gained and the product is as good as it can 
possibly be made. 

Artistic passion, the love of seeing things look well, love of music 
and pictures and all things beautiful; love of finding beauty in 
common things; interest in making oneself look always as beau- 
tiful as possible. 

Power and habit of reflection, philosophy, reasoning things out; the 
power to put two and two together, to see through a matter and 
find out why a thing is made in such a way and no other. 

Passion for truth for its own sake, for finding out what the under- 



510 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

neath processes of nature are, for scientific investigation in the 
natural world about us. 

Power of growth ; a teachable spirit, ability to take suggestions, and 
to act generously upon them; employment of means to maintain 
efficiency and perseverance in these efforts; ability to rise after 
failures and to strike in again with better knowledge. 
Perfect relations with the various members of the family. 

Attentive and affectionate relations with the father. 

Loving and helpful relations with the mother. 

Amiable and companionable relations with brothers (if nearly one's 
own age). 

Fair, responsive and tender relations with sister (if nearly one's 
own age). 

Patient and inspirational relations with the younger children. 
Community spirit. 

Dependable and active relations with the church. 

Inquiring, critical, responsive relations with the school. 

Helpful working relations with the community societies and societies 
for young people. 

Cordial furtherance of any public work for betterment. 

A pure, self-sacrificing and noble influence among the village young 
people. 
Definite preparation for the home that is to be. 

Training in the business of the home. 

Training in the knowledge of child-life and child-psychology. 

Training in the laws governing the property of women. 
Qualities for an efficient administrator of a household: 

Knowledge of the business and training for it either at home or in 
some school. 

Power to systematize work, to apportion out labor, and to keep ac- 
counts and make budgets ; power to purchase and to save wisely. 

Ability to carry things through in a business-like way; courage to 
undertake things; ability to make both ends meet. 

Resourcefulness; ability to act promptly when things go wrong, to 
adapt oneself to changes, to show reserve in emergencies. 

Power to save time and avoid dawdling ; to avoid ^unnecessary mo- 
tions and waste of energy ; to avoid unnecessary waste of materials. 

Passion for cleanliness in rooms, furniture, utensils, linen; passion 
for personal cleanliness. 

A real love of work itself, a love to create good things; a love to 
see things done and to do them. 



LXVIII 
STRENGTH AND SPLENDOUR 

" With failing feet and shoulders bowed 

Beneath the weight of happier days, 
He lagged among the heedless crowd, 

Or crept along suburban ways. 
But still through all his heart was young, 

His mood a joy that nought could mar, 
A courage, a pride, a rapture, sprung 

Of the strength and splendour of England's war. 

From ill-requited toil he turned 

To ride with Picton and with Pack, 
Among his grammars inly burned 

To storm the Afghan mountain-track. 
When midnight chimed, before Quebec 

He watched with Wolfe till the morning star; 
At noon he saw from Victory's deck 

The sweep and splendour of England's war. 

Beyond the book his teaching sped, 

He left on whom he taught the trace 
Of kinship with the deathless dead, 

And faith in all the Island Race. 
He passed: his life a tangle seemed, 

His age from fame and power was far ; 
But his heart was high to the end, and dreamed 

Of the sound and splendour of England's war." 

THE poem is by Henry Newbolt, of England. We can 
almost see him coming down the street, that vet- 
eran schoolmaster, stooping and slow, burdened and ob- 

511 



512 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

scure. All his days he has been poorly paid, his efforts have 
been in the narrow sphere of his schoolhouse, his life has 
indeed seemed a tangle, and power and fame have dwelt far 
from him. Yet as he raises his head, there shoots a gleam 
from the faded eyes beneath their shaggy gray brows. He 
is companioned by noble thoughts, the book beneath his arm 
tells of heroic deeds, in his humble home there are many 
other such books, there are pictures on the wall, there is a 
piece of heroic music lying near his piano or violin, and in 
his old unstained heart there is yet " a courage, a pride, a 
rapture " from " the sweep and splendour of England's 
war." 

He lives all day with thankless cubs in school, but when 
evening falls he is the comrade of Wolfe on the Plains of 
Abraham or of Gordon at Khartoum. 

More than this, it is " the strength and splendour of Eng- 
land's war " that nerves him for his own daily and petty 
conflicts. It is his " faith in all the Island Race " that gives 
him faith in his unpromising youngsters and makes him 
force them to the habits of discipline and self-control which 
may some day make them good soldiers. And he has his 
reward. Though his own feet can never travel from his 
treadmill, one of his pupils walks the quarter-deck, and of 
many whose lives are pure and brave it may be said that he 

has 

"left on whom he taught the trace 
Of kinship with the deathless dead." 

Unknown to himself, this old campaigner who has never 
marched has done a work infinitely more patient, more 
brave, more fruitful than that of the soldiers whom he has 
worshiped as heroes, and it is his sort of task and not that 
of war which has made the real strength and splendour of 



STRENGTH AND SPLENDOUR 513 

England. But the unconsciousness of what he has done 
and brought to pass lifts him to the heroic level and gives 
him the ringing epitaph with which Mr. Newbolt crowns 
him: 

" his heart was high to the end, and dreamed 
Of the sound and splendour." 

ANOTHER HEROIC SCHOOLMASTER 

Such a schoolman has recently died in Detroit. His 
name was Henry Gray Sherrard. " The world," said Sir 
Henry Taylor, " knows nothing of its greatest men," and 
the world will never hear of Mr. Sherrard. His life-story 
can be told in a sentence. For eighteen years he taught 
Latin and Greek to boys in our schools and then for eight 
years he was a helpless invalid. 

He was a gaunt apparition, over six feet tall. The aver- 
age high-school student dreads nothing so much as work. 
And work was the one thing that Sherrard demanded. The 
pupil who had not prepared one of his appalling assignments 
was met with a fury that would have annihilated anybody 
'but — a high-school Junior. He would tear his hair, screw 
his face into awful lines and curse your ancestors for bring- 
ing such a blockhead into the world, until he could be heard 
all over the building. He would draw his chalk across im- 
perfect work with a blood-curdling squeak and hurt his 
fingers as he did so, or frame it conspicuously in a chalk 
frame, to stand as a monument of shame. Sometimes, in 
his emotion he would thrust his foot into the waste-basket, 
and the tradition is that once both feet were thus so tightly 
wedged that it became necessary to destroy the basket in 
order to release him. " And yet," says one of his pupils, 
" we all adored him. Five minutes after he had flayed you, 



514 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

you were probably marching down the hall arm in arm with 
him." 

He taught Greek so that a boy would not only learn 
Greek and learn to work, but he made it the most practical 
subject in the curriculum, by using it to make slipshod work 
impossible. " He made, not merely scholars, but men of 
us." And he knew more than Greek. He talked with a 
dentist so that he thought Mr. Sherrard was a dentist. He 
read Plato with his feet on the fender, but he was an au- 
thority on child labor, too. When he knew that he could 
not get well, he determined at least to endure like a man. 
He busied himself with teaching his children, with reading, 
with basketry and with a telephone which stood at his bed- 
side and connected him with his friends. He was cheerful 
to the end. His last message was, " I am not unhappy." 

His pupils are. many of them great teachers to-day. 
Some, whom he helped without charge, owe their intellectual 
lives to him. His fortitude more than his teaching has 
made him a mighty influence among all who knew him. 

It is not schoolmasters only who live such lives of inspired 
faithfulness. The father and mother who in their youth- 
ful dreams see something more in their children than part- 
ners in the business or contributors to the family treasury 
and who take from the finest achievements of men models 
for the future of their own children — these belong to this 
group of the high-hearted. I know a traveling fire-insur- 
ance agent in a Massachusetts town who has his three chil- 
dren on the way to or through college. In the same town 
I know a farmer and his wife who began saving money for 
their children's education as soon as they were born. It is 
out of these homes, where culture was self -earned and 
money was scarce, and not out of those that had plenty of 



STRENGTH AND SPLENDOUR 515 

resources that the ministry of America has always come. 
It is extraordinary what a proportion of the nation's leaders 
in every great place has also come from such origins. 

Once, purely by accident, I found the footprints of a man, 
an old Confederate captain, who in the humblest kind of 
work had wrought a strength and splendour that caused me 
to revere him. 

Somewhere I had come across these strange, rhythmic 
lines : 

" He asked for strength that he might achieve ; he was made weak 

that he might obey. 
He asked for health that he might do greater things ; he was given 

infirmity that he might do better things. 
He asked for riches that he might be happy; he was given poverty 

that he might be wise. 
He asked for power that he might have the praise of men; he 

was given weakness that he might feel the need of God. 
He asked for all things that he might enjoy life; he was given Life 

that he might enjoy all things. 
He had received nothing that he asked for, all that he hoped for. 
His prayer is answered. He is most blest." 

They seemed to me to sum up a brave and heroic life- 
story. Having secured the name of the author, I wrote to 
him and asked him if he would tell me how he came to write 
them. And below is what he told me, the story of what I 
have since called 

THE CREED OF A SOLDIER 

Captain R. H. Fitzhugh was born of slave-holding par- 
ents in the little village of Port Royal on the banks of the 
Rappahannock in Virginia. He was reared among slaves 
on a great plantation, was educated in the school of hard 
knocks, and became at length a civil engineer. 



516 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

When he was a boy of twelve he was taken, in the sum- 
mer of 1848, by his father, who was a lawyer, into a case- 
mate of Fortress Monroe, where a court martial was in 
session. Upon entering the dark, grim, gun-room lit up 
with candles, his eyes were at once riveted upon a man bril- 
liant in the gold trappings of full military uniform, pre- 
siding at a little table upon an elevated platform. The man 
was wonderfully handsome and with a majesty so serene, 
so beautiful, that the boy's interest was at once tempered 
with awe. He had never seen a man look like that. It 
might be a king, but kings never looked so good and beau- 
tiful. The vision, unchanged but heightened, lingers with 
him still; for this man who became his life's hero was Rob- 
ert E. Lee, then an American captain, later the commander- 
in-chief of the armies of the Confederacy. 

Mr. Fitzhugh entered the Confederate army at the out- 
break of the Rebellion and in two years had suffered in 
three northern prisons, when, upon being exchanged at City 
Point on the James River, he had his first interview with 
General Lee. The General was alone. He inquired with 
sympathy for his welfare and that of his family and as- 
signed him to General John B. Hood's division, which he 
reached in time to ride beside his commander in the assault 
on Little Round Top in the battle of Gettysburg. 

He rejoined General Lee again in Pennsylvania and heard 
him decline the hospitality of his Northern hosts, because 
he would not seek shelter under any roof, whether of friend 
or foe, while his men were lying shelterless. He once 
worked out for the general's approval a battle line, to which 
General Lee objected, because women and children might be 
in the line of fire. " The population is small," said Captain 



STRENGTH AND SPLENDOUR 517 

Fitzhugh, " and most of them would leave the place before 
the battle." " Where would they go?" asked the general 
sharply, and then more tenderly he added, " Ah, Captain, our 
people have sorrows enough already; let us strive to spare 
them all we can." 

Since the war, Captain Fitzhugh, like so many of the 
brave Southerners, has been a servant of the Government 
against which his hand was raised, in the army engineering 
corps. He has " helped his wife (a little) to bring up a 
family of seven children (all doing us honor and bringing 
us great comfort)," and now, in his old age, nearly eighty, 
he is the manager of a home in Lexington, Kentucky, for 
friendless and orphan negro children, " trying to give them 
a better chance in a world to which they don't seem to be 
very welcome." 

What a brave, a stormy, a beautiful life! I thought you 
would like to hear of the old soldier, and I thought so prin- 
cipally, because of the lines which I have printed. 

It strikes one with a certain sublimity that this soldier of 
many battles and prisons should come, in the evening of his 
life, to give his tender and daily care to the children of the 
bond-slave, for whom we in the North in our ignorance sup- 
pose that the Southerner does not care, providing them shoes 
and teaching them how to make them, giving them school- 
ing and even sending some of them to Tuskeegee, and rais- 
ing the money to make it possible for them to have some- 
where near a white boy's chance. " He asked to rule that 
he might be great ; he was made to serve that he might be 
greater." 

And this is why, for a year, whenever I have been dis- 
illusioned, I have whispered over and over to myself the 



518 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

brave old Captain's lesson : " He asked for all things that 
he might enjoy life; he was given Life that he might enjoy 
all things." 

GLORY TO THE VANQUISHED 

Stevenson used to tell us that we were not meant to win, 
but to lose in good spirits. With Richard Hovey he would 
say: 

" Who would not rather founder in the fight 

Than not have known the glory of the fray? 

Ay, to go down in armor and in might, 
With our last breath to dominate dismay, 

To sink amid the mad sea's clashing spears 

And with the cry of bugles in our ears ! " 

One of Steveneson's best friends was Dr. Edward L. 
Trudeau, a consumptive like himself, but a man who had 
lived with the fragment of one lung until he had built the 
greatest sanitarium on earth for others thus afflicted. Dr. 
Trudeau used to say: 

" My sympathies are naturally in the world with the 
vanquished. My favorite statue is that great one of Vic- 
tory carrying the dying gladiator, his broken sword in hand. 
The world applauds and bows before success and achieve- 
ment; it has little thought for those who fall by the way, 
sword in hand ; and yet it takes most courage to fight a los- 
ing fight!" 

The statue to which he referred was one entitled " Glory 
to the Vanquished," a fine copy of which stood in the hall 
of his house. There was something of the doctor's own 
heroic spirit in the figure of the gladiator, with the broken 
sword in the drooping right hand, and the left arm still 



STRENGTH AND SPLENDOUR 519 

held aloft, as if the dying warrior challenged even death: 
" I who am about to die salute you." 

General Lee was this type of man. His biographer says 
of him, that " he was a foe without hate, a friend without 
treachery, a soldier without cruelty and a victim without 
murmuring." 

We say that Ronald Amundsen was a success and Cap- 
tain Robert Scott was a failure, because the Norwegian dis- 
tanced the Englishman by a month in the race for the South 
Pole. But when we remember how Scott at the Pole, in 
such contrast with the selfish men who surrounded the North 
Pole, wrote down in his diary only that he was sorry because 
his companions were disappointed, when we remember his 
suffering retreat thinking only of the others, and how in the 
face of death he made the record that he was glad he had 
come, and that, if it had not been for accident, he ' could 
have told a story of the courage of his companions that 
would have added glory to the name of an Englishman,' we 
recognize in this unselfish hero one of the successes of the 
twentieth century. 

" THE FAILURES HALF-DIVINE " 

When we remember men of sorrows like Lee and Steven- 
son and Trudeau and Fitzhugh and Sherrard, men who kept 
the tryst, we feel like crying with the old Greeks: "Io! 
Victis ! " Hail to the Conquered ! 

Of these conquered Elizabeth Cardozo has written this 
hymn: 

" We meet them on the common way, 
They passed and gave no sign, — 
The heroes that had lost the day, 
The failures half-divine. 



520 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Ranged in a quiet place we see 
Their mighty ranks contain 
Figures too great for victory, 
Hearts too unspoiled for gain. 

"Here are earth's splendid failures, come 
From glorious foughten fields; 
Some bear the marks of combat, some 
Are prone upon their shields. 

" To us that still do battle here, 
If we in aught prevail, 
Grant, God, a triumph not too dear, 
Or strength, like theirs, to fail." 



LXIX 

THE SECRETS OF CHEERFULNESS 

WAS down in the psychopathic ward of our public li- 
* brary the other day looking for some sensible book on 
" Don't Worry " for young people. Almost all of them 
were either so psychological or so mystic that the reader 
would die of some other disease before he got time to com- 
prehend the line of thought, or else they were so full of 
gentle New-Thought cooing that the only disease they would 
remedy would be insomnia. In the one case you were con- 
fronted by such words as " obsession," " auto-suggestion " 
and " phobias " ; in the other by such phrases as " thought 
rules matter," and " spirit cures fear-thought " ; and in both 
cases you could start in anywhere and it all read about 
alike. 

I began to wonder if this self -curative thought could not 
be simplified for young folks so that they could understand 
it and would use it. Let us take Worry, which is the only 
contagious disease, except falling in love, to which the 
young are subject. Let me give a few plain suggestions 
as to its cure. 

CURING BY REFUSING TO WORRY 

If you look at a housefly in the microscope it will assume 
horrible proportions, and if you magnify your troubles they 
will appear like monsters. But suppose you try to see them 
no more than lifesize. 

521 



522 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Take worries about the past. Some one has said that 
there are two kinds of past troubles — those that can be 
helped and those that can't. Neither of these is helped by- 
worry. Dr. George L. Walton thought of entitling his 
book on " Why Worry? " " The Unfret Gizzard : How to 
Attain It," and of giving it this motto : 

" Fret not thy gizzard under adverse fates, 
For the fret gizzard incapacitates." 

Those that can be helped let us get up and help, those 
that cannot be helped let us forget. And let us see both of 
them just as they are, and no worse. " Don't cry over spilt 
milk — just milk another cow " is a proverb that has helped 
me turn away from the past to the present. A happier turn 
has been given to Whittier's pathetic lines : 

" Of all sad words of tongue or pen 
The saddest are these, ' It might have been/ " 

by continuing. 

" Add this suggestion to the verse, 
It might have been a little worse." 

And so, too, with the future. How sensible was the 
Master's word, to " let the future worry about itself ! " 
This cannot be attained all at once, but I know of one man 
who made and kept the rule, never to worry about anything 
after ten o'clock at night, and of another who kept record 
of the hours he had succeeded in not worrying. But worry 
is best attacked indirectly. You know of the young woman 
whose experience was as follows : 



THE SECRETS OF CHEERFULNESS 523 

" I joined the new Don't Worry Club 
And now I hold my breath; 
I'm so scared for fear I'll worry 
That I'm worried most to death." 

Worry about the future is best conquered by displacement. 
You can't stop worrying, but you can put in thoughts that 
will crowd worry out. 

"If you are on the worry train, 

Get a transfer. 
You must not stay there and complain, 

Get a transfer. 
The cheerful cars are passing through, 
And there is lots of room for you — 

Get a transfer." 

CURING BY ENJOYING LITTLE THINGS 

I have read this suggestive definition of happiness: 
" Happiness is the faculty of being surprised/' Some one 
analyzing the exuberance of Mr. Roosevelt has said that his 
bubbling animation consists chiefly of the ability to enjoy 
every experience as if it were a fresh one. If there are 
little things you like, never be ashamed of them; keep on 
cherishing them, for they are sources of happiness and ene- 
mies of worry. I don't care what they are — fried onions, 
the Elsie books, old slippers. Let others scorn them — 
what do you care? " To be interested is to be happy." 

If you are not happy now, when do you ever expect to 
be ? Life will always consist of little things, and you might 
as well begin to like some of them. If you are not happy 
now, you will not be in heaven, for happiness is a faculty 
of the soul, not a series of possessions. Who was it who 
remarked when Matthew Arnold died, " He won't like 



524 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

God " ? Whoever it was summed up a character which 
had won discrimination at the price of joy. Probably 
heaven consists of little things. I hope so, for I have always 
felt that the twenty-first of Revelations was too big and 
public. 

Mr. E. P. Powell once said, " Every one wonders, and is 
carried out of himself when once he has discovered morn- 
ing. " I started once " A Year of Sunrises.' ' Seeing a 
sunrise once, entirely by accident, I made up my mind that 
the two most beautiful things in a day were sunrise and sun- 
set, and I had been missing one of them all my life. It 
was New Year's when I made my resolve, and I was amazed 
to discover how varied was this pageant which is free to all 
and which I did not have to go abroad to visit. How 
many of us enjoy the sky, or really ever see the changing 
clouds? Do we have as much fun with children as we 
might? Might not even gossip, that universal sacrament, 
be made vastly more amusing? 

Richard Jeffries boasted that every loaf of English bread 
had been sung over by an English lark. Why should not 
the gift of bread everywhere every morning be sung over 
by a human voice? This joy of living in the present was 
expressed once by Emily Dickinson when she said, 

" Instead of going to heaven at last 
I'm going all along." 

" I once gave a lady two-and-twenty recipes against mel- 
ancholy," said Sydney Smith. " One was a bright fire; 
another to remember all the pleasant things said to her ; an- 
other, to keep a box of sugar-plums on the chimney-piece 
and a kettle simmering on the hob. I thought this mere 
trifling at the moment, but have in after-life discovered 



THE SECRETS OF CHEERFULNESS 525 

how true it is that these little pleasures often banish mel- 
ancholy better than higher objects." 

" Make every event as picturesque as possible," says 
Lucy Elliot Keeler. " We can make a rosary of gracious 
thoughts and deeds. We can have fun with our own minds." 
And Lydia Maria Child used to say : " I seek cheerful- 
ness in every possible way ; I hang prisms in my windows to 
fill the room with rainbows." 

If I were going to write a new Beatitude I think it would 
be this: Blessed are the playful, for theirs is the victory 
over muggy days. These are they who turn a task of 
drudgery into a picnic, who make a joke instead of a griev- 
ance out of a misunderstanding, and who never allow them- 
selves to go to sleep any night without having laughed heart- 
ily at least once that day. 

I once read in The Wellspring of a young girl who ex- 
plained her happy face by saying, " I always go glad to my 
day's work," by which I understand that she meant that she 
went either recollecting something pleasant in the past, or 
in the attitude of expecting something pleasant in the day. 

I suggest as a small but very useful foresight for happi- 
ness this plan: Always have a laid-up pleasure. Charles 
the Fifth, according to dear old Izaak Walton, thought the 
fields of Florence so pleasant that they ought to be reserved 
to be looked at only on holidays. 

A. C. Benson says that Lord Melbourne, who was Queen 
Victoria's prime minister when she was but a girl, always 
used to take two apples at dinner, and> hid one in his lap 
while he ate the other. " I asked him," says the Queen in 
her diary, " if he meant to eat it. He thought not, and said, 
* But I like to have the power of doing so.' I observed, 
hadn't he just as well the power of doing so when the apples 



526 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

were in the dish on the table? He laughed and said, l Not 
the full power/ " 

A cynical French philosopher noticing that a certain youth 
played no games said to him : " What a dreary old age you 
are laying up for yourself." I have myself more than once 
had cause to regret that I have not saved up more hobbies, 
so that I might always have something ready for pleasure in 
hours of weariness or days of escape. 

It may be that this joy in hoarding and collecting things 
is one that has come down to us from the time when men, 
like squirrels and muskrats, had to pile up and secrete food 
for the winter. I know a lady who, when she has a gift, 
goes at once and puts it in a new box in her storeroom, 
whence it is very hard to get her to take it out. She loves 
to arrange her things and look them over, but it almost 
seems to hurt her to use or wear them. She also keeps 
scraps and pieces laid by, and if twenty years later she 
finds some brief use for them, she feels the joy that comes 
from finding hid treasure. The bother of having to care 
for and tote these articles around for such a long time she 
does not count. She is the only one in the house who ever 
has one more piece of candy left in the box — and that is 
why her family get to it and eat it up before she does! 

I cannot but think that this is a very lovely and feminine 
trait, this always having one thing more, something rare 
and loved, in reserve. It was perhaps the trait that the 
Master praised when he called that householder wise who 
brings from his treasury " things but new and old." 

CURING BY LAUGHTER 

One of the best ways to be cheerful is to develop the habit 
of laughter. 



THE SECRETS OF CHEERFULNESS 527 

It helps a strenuous emergency a little to recollect that 
there is almost always something funny in every serious 
situation, and that this present trial will probably afford 
sources for future laughter. If all newly wed people could 
realize that, honeymoons would be prolonged. My sister 
sent me the following lines, the other day, which she guar- 
anteed, repeated three times and heartily, would conquer 
any domestic difficulty : 

" The dog is in the pantry, 
The cat is in the lake, 
The cow is in the hammock — 
What difference does it make ? " 

The trouble with many of us when we feel bad is that 
we are too self-important to laugh. I heard of a nervous 
invalid who met the assurance of a young physician that 
there was not very much the matter with him, with the irri- 
tated answer, " What does all a young doctor like you knows 
amount to beside an old and experienced invalid like me? " 
The helpfulness of laughter, even if it is forced laughter, 
is that it gets us outside ourselves. If you laugh whether 
you feel like it or not, then you act as if you wanted to be 
cheerful. The attitude of cheer makes cheerfulness. 

" You seem to have a bad cold,'-' said a friend pityingly 
to Charles Lamb. (Perhaps it was the same cold that he 
himself tells about, that " woke, like a murderer's conscience, 
every night about midnight.") 

" Yes," the cheerful Lamb replied, with his smile of 
quivering sweetness, " but it is the best I can do." 

Speaking of the vociferous joy of the life of John Burns, 
the miner who has become one of England's leaders, one of 
his friends says : " There is not an hour when he has not 
found it good to be alive." 



528 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Perhaps you would like to know some things at which it 
is usually safe to laugh. 

It is usually safe to laugh at yourself, at your own blun- 
ders. A dog was once sent into the water after a stick, 
but when he returned to shore he discovered that he had 
gallantly grasped in his mouth his own tail. How like 
our blunders. We are so earnest and so confident and so 
mistaken and so funny. But it is not so easy, is it, to see 
the humor in our own mistakes as in those of others? But 
we may very safely do so. 

We may laugh too, at our self-importance. I was read- 
ing the other day about a mother who was trying to be 
impressive by telling her young son a lot that she thought 
he needed to know. He watched her with entranced inter- 
est and suddenly exclaimed, " Why, Mamma, your upper 
jaw doesn't move any when you talk ! " This is much the 
way we appear to others when we think we are impressive. 
It is astonishing how, when the world looks blue and we 
feel ourselves slighted or injured, it suddenly brightens 
when we laugh at it and at ourselves. 

We may also laugh at what men call fate. I mean by 
fate simply the future. The reason we can laugh is be- 
cause the future, if one takes enough of it, is cheerful. How 
do we know this? Because we know God, and the future 
is in his keeping. " He that sitteth in the heavens shall 
laugh," said a Hebrew psalmist, and he was perhaps the 
first to discover that God has a sense of humor. I have a 
friend who, when he is worst beset, laughs and looks up at 
a motto on his wall, which reads " This too will pass." The 
verse quoted above was sung when Israel was hemmed in 
by Babylonia and it looked as if there was no escape. Yet 
to-day we have to look on the map to recall where Babylonia 



THE SECRETS OF CHEERFULNESS 529 

was. When his executioners asked Socrates where he would 
like to be buried, he smiled and told them that they would 
have to catch him before they could bury him. A small 
slice of the future may drive a man insane. Take enough 
of it and it is a subject for joyous laughter. 

#" Deep as the universe is my life," said Edward Carpenter, " and 
I know it. Nothing can destroy, nothing can harm me. 

" I take wings through the night and pass through all the wil- 
dernesses of the worlds, and the old, dark holds of tears and death 
— and return with laughter, laughter, laughter." 

Occasionally it is safe to laugh at others, modestly, and 
principally because they are nearly as absurd as ourselves. 
But there is always an inexhaustible theme for humor under 
our own hats. And when we can see that, we can also 
laugh at what is going to come to us, for if we see our- 
selves honestly and trust God truly, we are " Master of our 
fate " and " Captain of our souls." 

Such a man adds always to the cheer and laughter in the 
world. Says Edward Carpenter again : 

" What man shall go forth into the world, holding his life in his 
open palm — 

With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset — 

Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies ; 

His heart like Nature's garden — that all men abide in — 

Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun 
shines, 

And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fra- 
grance — 

Him immortality crowns. In him all sorrow . . . shall pass. 

They who sit by the road and are weary shall rise up as he 
passes." 



LXX 

THE CONTENTED GREAT 

¥ F ever I get a bit discouraged or discontented I turn to 
•■• Plutarch. Plutarch was a sort of Ben Franklin who 
lived in Rome in the time of Paul. He was the greatest 
of biographers. Being a Greek living in Italy he had made 
himself master of the lives of the greatest of the Greeks as 
well as Romans. He might be called the father of good 
stories, and one of the greatest pleasures in reading him is 
the surprise of discovering what one supposes to be a mod- 
ern anecdote in the writings of a man who lived nearly 
twenty centuries ago. His heroes are much alike ; they are 
usually simple, sincere, self -commanding men. There can 
be no greater praise of a man than to say, " He is one of 
Plutarch's men." This has been said of Grant and of Lin- 
coln. But the most admirable trait of those of which he 
writes is a certain superb contentment. Let us hear a few 
of his contentment stories. 

Socrates was always contented with his lot. One day 
hearing one of his friends crying out, " How dear things are 
sold in this city! The wine of Chios costs a mina, the pur- 
ple fish three, and a half pint of honey five drachmas ! " he 
brought him to a meal-shop, and showed him that he could 
buy a half a peck of flour for a penny. " This is a cheap 
city," he said. Then he brought him \o an oil-man's, and 
told him he might have a quart of olives for two farthings. 
At last he took him to a clothing store, and convinced him 

530 



THE CONTENTED GREAT 531 

that the price of a sleeveless jerkin was only ten drachmas. 
M This is a cheap city," he repeated. 

Artaxerxes Memnon was fleeing from the enemy. In his 
flight, when his carriages were plundered, he was forced to 
eat dry figs and barley bread. " Of how great pleasure/' 
said he, " have I hitherto lived ignorant." 

When Diogenes saw a man sprucing himself up neatly to 
go to a great entertainment to which Diogenes was not in- 
vited, he said, " Is not every day a festival to a good man? " 

Plutarch's men never were disturbed if they were not 
appreciated. Damonidas, when he was put by a chorister 
in the last rank of the chorus, exclaimed, "Well done! 
You have found a way to make this rank also honorable." 

When Cato the Elder saw how many other prominent men 
had their statues set up while he had none, he said, " I had 
rather men should ask, ' Why has Cato no statue ? ' than 
' Why in the world has he? ' '" 

A Grecian, some say Epictetus, was a slave. When the 
slave owner asked him, " Will you behave well if I buy 
thee? " " Yes," he returned, " and if you do not buy me." 

When Psedaretus was not chosen into the Three Hun- 
dred he went away laughing and very jocund. The Ephors 
calling him back asked him why he laughed. " I congratu- 
late the happiness of the city," he said, " that enjoys three 
hundred men better than myself." 

The secret of the contentment of Plutarch's men seems 
to have been that if they lost a good thing they had some- 
thing better. When some one commented on the frugality 
of Antipater who always dressed soberly, royal Alexander 
said, " Outwardly Antipater wears white, but within he is 
all purple." 

When Agesilaus was urged to hear one that imitated the 



532 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

voice of a nightingale, said he, " But I have often heard 
nightingales themselves." 

Plutarch had a way of attributing some of his sayings 
to more than one person, so that one mistrusts that he in- 
vented some of them himself. I like to think that these 
were his own thoughts which he hoped to make men trust 
by putting them in the mouths of great persons. I think 
of Plutarch as a very contented man himself. So let me 
quote a few words from his essay " On the Tranquillity of 
the Mind." " We are not to imitate the little vulgar who 
wait impatiently for the jolly days that are consecrated to 
Saturn and Bacchus, that they may make merry with hired 
laughter. If they would only give ear to the consolations 
of friendship, they might bear their present condition with- 
out faultfinding, remember the past with joy and gratitude, 
and live without fear or distrust, looking forward to the 
future with glad and lightsome hope." 

Lord Bacon was this kind of man. 

In his old age, " impeached, convicted, sentenced," Lord 
Bacon went to live quietly in Gray's Inn, where he became 
practically the head gardener, began a History of Eng- 
land under the Tudors and a Philosophical Romance, dic- 
tated what Macaulay called " the best collection of jests in 
the world " and entertained his younger friend, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, with whom he talked of adventure and in whose 
honor he planted a catalpa-tree that is still standing. " Shut 
out from the deliberations of his fellow-nobles, sinking un- 
der the weight of years, sorrows and diseases, Bacon was 
Bacon still." 

The fact that sorrows and burdens need not affect the 
real man is appreciated by Dr. George L. Walton, who says 
that his own greatest comfort in the face of trouble has 



THE CONTENTED GREAT '533 

been this homely motto, which might have teen Lord Ba- 
con's : " Never touched me!" 

LEAVING OUT THE HURRY 

Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago a man wrote 
during ten years a personal diary in a secret code, not know- 
ing that any other eye would ever see it. It lay for a hun- 
dred and twenty-five years undiscovered. Then it was tran- 
scribed and was found to be the most perfect picture that 
is left to us of the days of Charles the Second. I have 
been reading of late in this diary of Samuel Pepys and 
enjoying its pictures of the court, the country, the people in 
the time of that merry monarch. The book goes on forever 
in its leisurely way. It would almost take a lifetime to 
read it. Not until I had read in it for days did it occur to 
me to realize that this bright-eyed man who seemed forever 
lounging with pen in hand looking on at the scenery of life 
was one of the busiest men of his time. As the executive 
of a lazy patron he had two men's work to do, and he did it 
so well that he is credited with having been the maker of 
England's navy. And yet as I looked back, I could think 
of but one passage where he seemed to have been in haste. 
Then he confessed that he was " weary in mind and heart." 
Though writing only for himself, he left out all the hurry. 

Then I walked to my bookcase and asked myself if there 
had been others whose lives had been crowded with bustle. 
As I walked down the shelves, I caught the name of Charles 
Lamb, whose quiet, spacious essays and great, generous 
friendships will never be forgotten, and I thought of him 
drudging all day in an office until nine years before his death 
and then coming home to play cribbage with his distraught 
old father or to try to make the evening bright for his af- 



534 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

flicted sister Mary. I thought of a letter that Charles Lamb 
once wrote to a youth who had discovered, so he said, that 
life was not worth living. Lamb, you well remember, had 
had plenty, if any man ever had, to cause him to get tired 
of life. 

" One passage in your Letter a little displeas'd me. You 
say that 'this World to you seems drain'd of its sweets! ' 
At first I had hoped that you only meant to intimate the high 
price of Sugar! But I am afraid you meant more. O, 
Robert, I don't know what you call sweet. Honey and the 
honeycomb, roses and violets, are yet in the earth. The sun 
and the moon yet reign in Heaven, and the stars keep up 
their pretty twinklings. Meats and drinks, sweet sights and 
sweet smells, a country walk, spring and autumn, follies 
and repentance, quarrels and reconcilements have all a 
sweetness by turns. Good humour and good nature, friends 
at home that love you, and friends abroad that miss you — 
you possess all these things, and more innumerable, and 
these are all sweet things. You may extract honey from 
everything." 

The fact that what makes us happy is really near home 
is emphasized by Don Marquis' humorous remark that " this 
is an era in which the young man leaves the country and 
works like the deuce in the city for thirty years so that he 
can afford to go and live in the country." 

I thought of Thomas Hood, so pressed in the support of 
his family that he must write comic verses for a living and 
so had time to write but one " Song of the Shirt " and one 
" I Remember, I Remember." I thought of Charles Reade, 
the busy journalist and dramatist, working like a consci- 
entious craftsman at his great novel, " The Cloister and the 
Hearth." I thought of the poet Matthew Arnold saying: 



THE CONTENTED GREAT 535 

" One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, 
Of Toil, unsevered from Tranquillity — 
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry," 

and yet for thirty-five years hastening all over England in 
the thankless work of a school inspector. I thought of 
Richard Jefferies, lying upon English downs and writing his 
slow-moving pictures of English fields and saying : " Haste 
not. Be at rest. This Now is eternity," while with en- 
feebled frame and burdened by a disease that gave him con- 
stant torture he was writing " space " for a newspaper just 
to keep the wolf from the door. I thought of that most 
quiet of modern essayists, A. C. Benson, the head of a great 
English school. They were all crowded men, but they had 
all, as one of them said, " cleared a space to live in " and 
the hurry was left out of their finished work. 

I once asked the busiest man I know how he succeeded 
in being always so serene. His answer was, " I always 
leave the hurry upstairs. I never allow it to come down 
with me." I have watched my friend swinging home from 
his work at night. There is still tension in his walk and 
hand-grasp. He gives a cheery but brief greeting to those 
in the house. At once he disappears upstairs. You hear 
a prodigious noise in his bath and soon he comes down, 
sleek and smiling and freshly dressed. " Like the demoniac 
in the New Testament," I have heard him explain as he 
kissed his wife, " now I am clothed and in my right mind." 

Benson's motto is : " Ardor and Tranquillity." The ar- 
dor for the day's work, the tranquillity for one's friends. 
It is like a great house where there is much going on, yet 
which has a quiet guest-room. It is like an English home 
in which I once visited, where on Sunday each member of the 
family in turn excused himself, as I learned later to engage 



536 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

in some work of mercy, but where there was always some 
one on duty to entertain the guest. 

Probably most of the best work in the world is done un- 
der pressure. The reason it is done so well is that those 
who do it insist on reserving some space where the hurry is 
left out. 

This spirit is well worded in Max Ehrmann's prayer : 
" Spare me from bitterness and from the sharp passions 
of unguarded moments. May I not forget that poverty 
and riches are of the spirit. Lift my eyes from the earth, 
and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Keep ever 
burning before my steps the vagrant light of hope. And 
though age and infirmity overtake me, and I come not within 
sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thank- 
ful for Life, and for time's olden memories that are good 
and sweet; and may the evening's twilight find me gentle 
still." 

THE QUIET HEART 

Two little things give any girl an appealing beauty. One 
is a sweet voice, and the other is a quiet spirit. How often 
I read with a sense of rest fulness that verse of Miss Ros- 
setti's about one of her heroines: 

" Her heart sat silent through the noise 
And concourse of the street. 
There was no hurry in her hands, 
No hurry in her feet." 

In this world of alarm clocks is it not pleasant to think that 
the young of one sex at least can preserve that leisure which 
gives the rest of us some warrant for believing that there 
is a stopping-place somewhere ? To us who feel oftentimes 
as if our earth were like the world of Alice in Wonder- 



THE CONTENTED GREAT 537 

land where one has to run just to keep in the place where 
he was, it is rest to see a girl whose hands even are un- 
hurrying. It has always given me a sense of disquiet to 
be told that the birds in paradise are footless, And ac- 
cording to sacred art this same is true of the cherubs, but let 
us hope that the defect is remedied when they grow up and 
that the female angels have feet to rest and something to 
sit down upon. 

I know a lady who, when the cause of woman is dis- 
cussed, always falls asleep, but if a child should come into 
the room and be asked who that was present was acquainted 
with fairies, the child would come at once to her. Her 
example once made a minister's wife forsake her husband, 
because she said she must have room to let her soul grow. 
But I cannot but think the minister was to blame, because 
he was supposed to preach the doctrine of One who said, 
" Come unto me . . . and find rest." 

And all that is needed is to take time to be quiet. Agnes 
Gilbert tells about rambling in the woods one day until she 
came face to face with a splendid oak across a clearing. 
" I caught a sudden flash of scarlet, and there, half way up 
the tree, curled within three gray branches, was a young 
girl, her scarlet jacket the one bright glimpse in all that 
quiet gray and green. She was lying, cradled in secure 
comfort, her hands under her head, gazing through the 
green leaves up into the bluest of skies. Now and then the 
wind would sing through the branches, or a scudding cloud 
would throw a flickering shadow over her upturned face — 
no other sound, no other change than that. Perfectly mo- 
tionless she lay, her face serene with the serenity of the sky 
itself. As I slowly wound my way home I fell to thinking 
about the girl's face — how lovely it had been, turned inno- 



538 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

cently up into the light of the sky, as she lay there, trusting 
in the great arms to hold her, as they had doubtless held 
her many times before. For this girl, with her scarlet 
jacket, lying high in the oak in motionless contentment, had 
found out what many a girl never finds — the joy that na- 
ture shares with all who will accept it. The girl who climbs 
for a half-hour into the gray cradle of a tree hidden in the 
quiet woods has learned a secret that will bring her more 
and more of comfort and pleasure as the years go on." 

THE PEACE OF CHARTRES 

In the noble cathedral of Chartres it has been the cus- 
tom for many generations to have an annual processional 
through the crypt past the Well of the Martyrs, where in 
the first century those who gave their lives for the cross 
were buried. The story is that many years ago when the 
processional was passing this spot, amid a crowded throng, 
as it came time in the service for a choir-boy to respond 
to the priest's " Peace be with you " with the choral phrase 
" And with thy spirit," there was silence. Later it was 
found that the boy had been crowded into the well, and was 
drowned. His grieving mother continued to haunt the 
church. When the point came in the service for the re- 
sponse to the Pax Vobiscum no voice had been found beau- 
tiful enough to sing the words, and so there was still silence. 
But one day, while the mother and the rest were listening, 
they heard the response given above in the clerestory by 
angels. And so ever since, whereas in the whole of the rest 
of the Catholic world, the people sing the response to the 
Pax, in Chartres they are still silent, listening for angel 
voices. We too shall often find that our best music is in 
quietness. For " there is music even in a rest." 



LXXI 

THE MAN WHO SINGS AT HIS WORK 

** 'HpIS heart not height that makes the Grenadier." 

* I have been for several years collecting stirring 
stories of those whose spirit has made them good soldiers. 

Lewis McLouth was a teacher in a normal school. His 
attitude toward teaching may be known from a little daily 
habit of his. He always walked to school. When he came 
to that part of the journey where he could first see the 
schoolhouse, he used to stop and repeat these words from 
Marcus Aurelius : " Lo, I am going with gladness to that 
work for which I was born into the world." 

During his lifetime ten thousand future teachers were 
taught by him, and the chief lesson that everybody learned 
from him was that teaching is joyous. 

But what did teaching do to McLouth himself? His 
ability and enthusiasm promoted him to a professorship in 
a college, and then to the presidency of another. Political 
changes removed him at an advanced age, and he was 
obliged to accept a position more humble than any he had 
held for many years. He was just as sweet and glad in the 
lowly place as he had been in the high one. This is what 
he said when he was an old man : " This is the greatest 
occupation in the world. There's one regrettable defect in 
it." 

"What's that?" 

" The vacations are too many and too long." 

539 



540 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" The secret of the happy life," said this fine old gentle- 
man, " is preserving one's capacity for enjoyment. I never 
miss a sunset; I never fail to pat a child upon the head; I 
come to supper hungry. I marvel at the telephone, the 
wonders of my watch, the courtesy of my street-car con- 
ductor, the energy of Mr. Roosevelt. Believe me, there are 
very few people indeed who cannot have a real good time 
in the simple act of living, if they are a mind to." 

The man who wrote, " I wanted to live deep and suck 
out all the marrow of life," found the way to do it by liv- 
ing in a hut beside Walden pond, and when he was hard up 
making lead-pencils to pay for his groceries. He became, 
as he said, " an inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, 
a surveyor of forest paths, a man to water the red huckle- 
berry, the sand cherry, and the nettle-tree," and he found 
that the world would not pay much for this work. His 
" hoe tinkled against the stones and that music echoed to the 
woods and the sky." And Henry Thoreau succeeded, for 
he said, evidently thinking of himself: "If the day and 
night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits 
a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more 
elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your suc- 
cess." 

Lucy Elliot Keeler quotes the mother of Goethe as tell- 
ing a young girl that whenever she had anything disagree- 
able to do she always did it at once, because thus she could 
" gulp down the devil without looking at him." 

You have heard that a motto of the heir to the English 
throne always is : Ich dien, " I serve." Did you ever hear 
that there is a second motto, too? You will find it in- 
scribed on the tomb of the 'Black Prince at Canterbury, from 
whose grave these two legends have been handed down. 



THE MAN WHO SINGS AT HIS WORK 541 

There he lies in full armor, the youth whose father the king 
left him in peril at the battle of Crecy to fight his own way 
out, saying confidently, " Let the child win his spurs, and 
let the day be his." And here are his spurs and his shield 
and his helmet. And over his helmet is his crest, the three 
ostrich feathers that the Prince of Wales still wears. And 
on his arms are the two mottoes that he selected : Ich dicn, 
" I serve," and Honmont (or Hoch muth), " High spirits." 
The secret of the wonderful influence of this boyish prince 
was not only that he served, but that he served willingly, 
with a high and generous spirit, and with kindly tact. 

The bravest inscription of which I have ever heard is on 
a stone slab in a chapel of Ely Cathedral. It reads : 

GOD OF NATIONS 

I THANK THEE 
FOR ALL THE JOY 
I HAVE HAD IN LIFE 

Those words are so bright and free and generous that they 
remind us of a breath of fresh sea-air. You feel that they 
must have been spoken by a man on some glad day, when 
he had perhaps gained some great battle, and was feeling 
proud and uplifted because of his victory. But no; they 
were spoken when he was weary and wounded and bleeding 
and dying. Earl Bryhtnoth was one of the great fighters 
of the tenth century. When he heard that the Danes had 
raided the coast of Essex he gathered his men together to 
drive back the dreaded foe. On his way he obtained food 
from the monks of Ely, and besought them for a grave in 
their minster if he should fall in battle. He defeated his 
country's enemy, fighting with the strength of ten. But his 
sword-arm was disabled, and he was helpless. Then it was, 



542 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

while he was bleeding to death, that he raised himself on one 
arm, and uttered this triumphant death-cry : " God of na- 
tions, I thank thee for all the joy I have had in life." After 
which, we are told, he prayed for " a safe conduct " — that 
God's angels might carry him safely through the little way 
of darkness that lies between this world and the next — and 
so, with a smile on his lips, he died. 

SMILING DOWN THE VALLEY 

About the finest instance of this insistent joy in living 
that I have ever read is given us by Dr. Richard C. Cabot 
out of his practice of medicine. " I have seen," he says, 
" a patient dying of a lingering disease who by his sparkling 
fun and his brilliant good humor kept the specter of death 
at bay and in the pleasant land of counterpane maintained a 
successful and happy life up to the last. 

" When I would ask him to turn upon his side in order 
that I might examine his back, you would fancy from his 
expression that I had invited a hungry man to eat. He 
could have answered with no more engaging alacrity if we 
had proffered him the chance to step back into health. He 
took pleasure and gave it in each of the trifling services ren- 
dered him in the hospital routine. He beamed and thanked 
me for shifting a pillow as if I had given him a diamond. 
He chuckled merrily over my clumsy attempt to tilt the 
glass feeding-tube into his mouth without forcing him to 
raise his head, and each morning he smoothed and folded 
the flap of the topsheet as if it were a critical act. 

" As we exchanged the most unpoetic information about 
his daily routine, the dull framework of question and an- 
swer was irradiated and spangled over with a profusion of 
delicate, brilliant, meaningful looks that rose and flowered 



THE MAN WHO SINGS AT HIS WORK 543 

silently over his listening face, or leapt from dull sentences 
like morning-glories on a trellis. As he went step by step 
down the last gray week of his life he taught me all un- 
consciously as many lessons about art, beauty and play- 
fulness as about heroism. 

" One of his greatest and most naive arts, one of the best 
of all his manners, was that million-hued miracle called a 
smile. I can recall but a tithe of the unspoken verses, the 
soundless melodies that he wove into our talks by the end- 
less improvisations of his smile, serene, wistful, mischievous, 
deprecating, tender, joyful, welcoming. Not a moment of 
his ebbing life seemed prosaic or joyless, for each had in it 
the foretaste or the aftertaste of a smile, born without effort 
and dying without pain, — birth, fruition, and end all equally 
and differently beautiful. Sometimes at the beginning of 
our talk his face and eyes were silent and only the lines of 
his eloquent hand spoke to me. Then at a rousing recollec- 
tion there would break from his face a perfect chorus of 
meanings, each feature carrying its own strand of har- 
monious but varied melody. 

" He exemplified some of the minor arts through which 
life may be enhanced and refreshed from moment to mo- 
ment whatever the literal content, whether it is marching 
up hill or down dale." 

" If it prove a life of pain, greater have I judged the gain, 
With a singing soul for music's sake I climb and meet the rain." 

" BECAUSE HE LIKES IT " 

During the Indian Mutiny a small British host was en- 
camped on the ridge outside Delhi. When the news of 
the Cawnpore massacres reached them, the general ordered 
his men to attack Delhi. The doctor inspected the invalided 



544 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

soldiers to ascertain how many of them were strong enough 
to carry arms. He passed by a sickly youth as being 
too frail, when the lad cried : " For God's sake, sir, don't 
say I am not fit for duty ; it's only a touch of fever, and the 
sound of the bugle will make me well! " 

Carlyle used to bid us trust the man who sings at his 
work. 

"Two men," says Gerald Stanley Lee, " use exactly the 
same words — ' Honesty is the best policy.' 

" One man says it. 

" The other man sings it. 

"One man is honest because it pays. 

" The other man is honest because he likes it." 

Wherever a man makes " Houmont " part of his motto 
you may feel quite sure that the other half is " Ich Dien." 

Edgar A. Guest has put it all in this oft-quoted verse: 

" Somebody said that it couldn't be done, 

But he, with a chuckle, replied 
That ' Maybe it couldn't/ but he would be one 

Who wouldn't say so till he tried. 
So he buckled right in, with a trace of a grin 

On his face. If he worried he hid it. 
He started to sing as he tackled the thing 

That couldn't be done — and he did it." 



LXXII 

DON'T WHIMPER 

"VKTHEN John Burns, after an accident in drill on Salis- 
^* bury Plain, asked a sergeant whether any one was 
hurt, he replied, " The men of the Royal Artillery are some- 
times killed, but never hurt." 

Do you remember what Johnny Armstrong said in the old 
ballad? 

" Said John, ' Fight on, my merry men all. 
I am a little hurt, but I am not slain; 
I will lay me down for to bleed awhile, 
And then I'll rise and fight with you again/ " 

A dim recollection also comes to me of a warlike Scottish 
lass, whose legs were cut off in battle, 

" But when her legs were cuttit off she fought upon her stumps." 

And I cannot forget that when Sir Walter Raleigh was 
about to be led to the scaffold he said: "I would have 
England see me go joyfully to my end, that she may honor 
the faith that can support a man both in life and death," 
and that the next day when he stood beside the block he 
thanked God that he was to be allowed to die in the light. 
He was like the Douglas who, when the choice came between 
being a prisoner in town or a freeman on the hills, said, he 
" preferred rather to hear the lark sing than the mouse 
squeak." Similarly much-suffering little Nell cried : 
" When I die, put near me something that has loved the 
light, and had the sky above it always." 

545 



546 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

We cannot have too many stories of the men who have 
met the bright face of danger with joyousness. 

When Schley found the gallant Greeley, the arctic ex- 
plorer, apparently dying of starvation in his sleeping bag 
on the ice, he cried out, " Greeley, is that you? " " Yes," 
answered the hero faintly, — "seven of us left — here we 
are — dying — like men — Did what we came f or." 

" Did what we came for " — if a man has done that, why 
should he not be satisfied? Raleigh saying farewell to his 
men said : " It has been told me that you grieve for the 
fate of your Admiral. Your charity stirs me greatly, but 
you waste your pity. I have nothing left me but my honor, 
and I go to redeem it. Think me not boastful, but I hold 
death as no more than a thistle's down, if thereby I can 
come to my desire. If they slay me, England will think the 
better of me, and in a hundred years men's thoughts will 
turn to my thoughts and see their worthiness. Fear not for 
me, brave lads. 'Tis for England's sake and her unborn 
peoples! You would not hinder me from so great a joy?" 
And his last word to the crowd from the scaffold was, 
" Cherish my dreams ! " 

The weakest of all vices is self-pity. If I can allow my- 
self to feel that I am abused, that I am being treated un- 
justly, that I don't have half a chance, that others who de- 
serve little are having a more fortunate time than I, then I 
get flabby and rabbit-hearted and discouraged. 

Self-pity is so contagious that Annie Pay son Call says she 
knows of whole families that at times unite in having to- 
gether what she brightly calls a " suffering spree." 

And so as to self -distrust: Half the time when you say 
" I can't " all that you mean is " I never have." As my 



DON'T WHIMPER 547 

father used to remind me with a laugh, the most ridiculous 
gait is a " can'ter." Rather let us claim 

" The hearts of fire and steel, 

The hands that believe and build." 

Let me, like Raleigh, get out to live or die in the light, and, 
like the Douglas, listen to the lark singing rather than the 
rat squeaking; then I shall become a victor, and do "what 
I came for." George Nettle's poem, " The Victor," sings 
this well : 

" There are no vanquished days for him 

Whose goal is bright ahead, 
Though mists should make his pathway dim, 

And every hour be met 
Gray, spectral hooded ghosts and grim 

Who follow him and fret. 

" One falls beside him in the fight 

And claims a silent tear, 
Another faints in mute affright 

At the ensanguined bier, 
Yet doth his level lance swing right 

Into the face of fear. 

"What can the craven know of these? 

The clod inert and blind, 
Who drugs into unworthy ease 

His sluggard soul and mind, 
And never sets his nerveless knees 

Where high the great ways wind. 

" To such what boots the clarion call 
From the wide urging skies? 



548 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

So they may doze let empires fall 

And other men devise; 
Be merry, eat and drink — that's all 

Life holds to them as prize! 

" With what contempt and cleanly scorn 

The Victor spurns their plea; 
While from the starward slopes of morn 

Beyond the Time-locked sea, 
His challenge through the void is borne 

Unto Eternity. 

"There is no height he cannot scale, 

No death he dreads to know, 
Who takes the hem of Error's veil 

And tears it to and fro, 
Then battles with his breast in mail 

Each backward-beating foe. 

"There are no yesterdays for him 

Whose goal is bright ahead, 
New morrows o'er the horizon's rim 

Invite his conquering tread, 
And sternly spurs he every limb, 

Where glory's sun shines red." 



LXXIII 

THINGS THAT SPOIL WELL 

¥ HAVE been reading to-day that one good test of things 
* is whether they spoil well. Is that as new to you as it 
is to me? Let us see if it is true. 

Trying to think what some of the things are that spoil 
well, I cast my eye on an Oriental rug. When I bought it 
they told me it was already several hundred years old and 
had been taken out of a Persian home. It had a thin place 
and a patch, but it was never so lovely as after it had faded. 
But I have read that now they sometimes use our modern 
aniline dyes in Persia, and they do not fade well. 

I thought of laces. We have one or two old pieces in our 
house, and how softly creamy they are. They seem to have 
attuned themselves to human faces by being worn next to 
them. 

I looked in my library. I have one book there that was 
printed only a few years after the invention of printing. 
How strong and beautiful the type looks on the tinted page 
and within the darkened vellum binding. On my study wall 
is my great-grandfather's military commission, signed by 
John Hancock. That sturdy autograph is not more strong 
than the square masculine type, set so cleverly in its wide 
linen margin. 

I remembered some old paintings. I thought how much 
mellower the sunshine is in an old Rembrandt, how much 
richer the beauty of a Raphael than of any modern picture. 

549 



550 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

Timothy Cole says he never could get interested in the 
works of the Dutch painters, after he had visited the Italian 
artists, until he had discovered their thoroughness. " They 
paint the hair of a cow's back with the same reverence that 
Fra Angelico painted the flowers of Paradise." 

I remembered what I had heard of old violins, that the 
wood was capable of harmonies, after it had been played on 
for three centuries, that were not possible to the best mod- 
ern instruments. 

I also thought of humbler work. I recalled some hand- 
made shoes that I once saw, that no one could wear out and 
that had taken a pathetic modeling of the foot that once 
wore them. I remembered an oaken chest that I saw once 
in a humble cottage in England that was as perfect in shape 
and carving as the choir-stall of a cathedral. I even 
thought of some common pottery that I had seen in a hill 
town in Italy, and I thought how all we know of the Etruscan 
race is that their artisans made articles for home use that 
are the despair of the artist. 

Finally I realized how the things that men set up to 
match the strength of nature, stone houses and stone walls, 
grow old like the trees among which they stand, and spoil 
beautifully. 

And as I thought of all these works of men that in their 
decay wax beautiful I saw that each of them was a piece of 
honest work that had been made with joy. I thought how 
the Workman of Nazareth loved such craft, and how scorn- 
fully he spoke of the house that was built on a sandy founda- 
tion, the chest with a crazy lock which any thief could open, 
the yoke so poorly fitted that it could not give rest. 

I saw that he was right when he said that a life, like a 
house, could be built four-square to all the winds that blow, 



THINGS THAT SPOIL WELL 551 

and, like the house that I myself live in that was built nearly 
two hundred years ago, stand the witness of the sun and 
meet the test of spoiling. 

Which will you do, do work that shall stay, or make 
stuff that will "go"? 

DOING WORK TO A FINISH 

Joe Snap and Lawrence Easy begin to sell goods at ad- 
joining counters, but within three years Joe has passed out 
of Lawrence's class and is junior head of a department. 
Lawrence complains of the unfairness, and insists that he is 
just as bright and just as worthy as Joe. But this was the 
difference. When Lawrence was asked to show goods, he 
brought down a roll of cloth and threw it carelessly on the 
counter, he gave the price carelessly, humming to himself 
all the time and looking over at the girls at the perfume 
counter meanwhile. If the customer took it he checked it 
up with a yawn ; if not he threw the bundle back and waited 
idly for another customer. But Joe greeted his customer 
with a smile, he took down his bundle as if he prized it, he 
stroked it as he remarked upon its good quality at the price, 
he studied his prospective customer like a book and tried to 
think what he might say that would adapt itself to her spe- 
cific character, he held his temper if she was spiteful, and 
if she did not purchase said something to make her wish to 
return to his counter some other day. After she had gone 
he arranged his stock in an attractive way, and was alert 
as soon as any one else approached him. Lawrence was 
bright, but Joe was using his brightness. 

A man who could not live comfortably with himself until 
he had done his work to a finish was Robert Gray, a young 
college graduate of whom I have just read in The Well- 



552 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

spring. At the end of a year's foundation work his firm 
had decided that they could not afford to wait for the new 
department of which he was head to come to a profit-making 
basis, and so they had told him that he was to receive two 
weeks' salary, but during the second week he would be 
" relieved from all obligation of service " — to be at liberty 
to secure another position. 

His first step was to close up his work properly, whether 
it took one week or two. If the company did not realize 
the importance of his work, still he would do it right. He 
would not leave anything so vague that it would mean finan- 
cial loss where it might mean gain. He would close one 
door as it should be closed, even though he saw other doors 
opening to vistas beyond. 

At the end of one week Robert Gray made an application 
for work in the office of a famous civil engineer. His re- 
ception was friendly. 

" There is just one opening," he was told. " If you can 
leave for the West in two days, we can promise you a 
good salary and promotion. One man is going who pre- 
fers to stay at home. There has been no such opportunity 
for a year and there will not be again. Will you take it? " 

Gray had no family ties ; he could leave at once ; he had 
been relieved of all " obligation of service." It was a 
question of honor. Hardly conscious of a temptation, he 
looked into the eyes of the great engineer. " I cannot ac- 
cept the position," he said. " I must finish certain work on 
my desk that no one understands. If I leave it, it means 
the loss of advantage to the company that I meant for them 
to have. To go, would be to destroy the results of my year 
of work with them." 

" Do they ask such a sacrifice ? " 



THINGS THAT SPOIL WELL 553 

" No, because they cannot see that such a condition exists. 
I know it and so it is for me to complete the work." 

" But there is no contract? " 

" No, it has been left to my honor. I am sorry — I can- 
not go." 

When he left the office Robert Gray knew that he had 
put aside a brilliant prospect, but to him there had not been 
two ways ; there was but one path to choose. 

With a mind unclouded by remorse or regret he worked 
on through the following week. The work itself was his 
reward for having made his choice ; from a natural sense of 
honor he was denied the exhilaration of victory over self. 

On the last night of work, he walked off through the fa- 
miliar streets that seemed suddenly to have taken on a 
peculiar un familiarity. He seemed set aside from the 
workers; no one had need of him. Alive in all his pow- 
ers, — a thinking, healthy man, with an honest intent, — to 
what could he bend his purpose ? 

He took his long and customary walk into the country, 
for into some part of his day he always put a few hours of 
life in the open air. 

When he came back to his room he found a letter on his 
table. The letter was from the great engineer, and it read : 

" That position could not be held for you, but I believe 
that we need you in our work. Come to my office in the 
morning." 

A neighbor of mine spent over forty years of his life 
working regularly nine hours a day comparing the different 
texts of Shakespeare. When he died he had published six- 
teen volumes, and he left his life work to be finished by his 
son. But during all those years he never wearied. " Any 
other man," said his friend Chapman, " would have attacked 



554 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

his work like a beaver. Dr. Furness attacked it like a bee." 
He took only the honey that he loved, but he loved Shake- 
speare's best so much that he was never bored and he never 
bored others. His face was so happy that his friend says 
that if he had seen him in a railroad station and not known 
who he was he should have followed him home, tracked him 
to his habitat, so as to assure himself that such a happy man 
was really earthborn. 

Such was the joy of a man who knew that he was doing 
a lifelong piece of work to a finish. 

I like to see that frank inner kind of character that makes 
a fellow do the decent thing because he would be uncom- 
fortable if he didn't. Don't you? 

HE HAD TO TELL THE TRUTH 

A well-known publisher was telling me the other day 
about an interesting boy. He was in one way like Wash- 
ington — he could not tell a lie. He grew up to young 
manhood without ever having been guilty of an untruth. 
Whether this singular lad has had especially good examples 
from truth-lovers in his home, I do not know, but I suspect 
that this fact explains his quality. 

My friend, whom we will call Thurman, watched this 
boy carefully and appreciatively from the time he was born 
until he was grown up, and when he left school he decided 
to help him secure a place. 

So he went to the president of a large paper concern and 
asked him if he wanted to make an investment. 

" Now, Thurman," exclaimed the manufacturer, " you 
aren't trying to get me into one of those get-rich-quick 
schemes, where I am to double my money in three years ? " 

" No, Regan," said Mr. Thurman, " this is not a get-rich- 



THINGS THAT SPOIL WELL 555 

quick scheme, but you will be sure to double on your invest- 
ment in about ten years." 

" Well, that is better. What is the investment? " 

" I want you to invest in a boy," said Mr. Thunnan. So 
he described this young man and especially spoke of his one 
peculiarity. 

" If you give him a good trial, you will want to come to 
me in a few years and thank me for doing you the greatest 
favor I ever did to your business," said Mr. Thurman in 
conclusion. 

The boy went to work. In a few days the vice-president 
of the company came to Mr. Regan and said, " I want that 
boy fired." 

"Why?" asked the president. 

" He won't obey orders." 

" What did you order him to do? " 

" I told him to substitute fifty-pound Sunburst cover paper 
for sixty." 

" What did the boy say ? " 

" He said he couldn't do it because that would not be 
telling the truth. I told him nobody would ever know the 
difference." 

"What did he reply?" 

" He said he would." 

" We can't fire him," said Mr. Regan, " we are too much 
indebted to Mr. Thurman. Besides, I promised to invest in 
that boy and I don't know that it would be fair to take out 
my investment so soon. Let's try him a while longer." 

" Well, if he stays here," growled the vice-president, " we 
shall have to alter our way of doing business." 

So the boy stayed, and as he grew, that big firm actually 
did alter its way of doing business. When one young man 



556 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

in charge of an important department always insists on tell- 
ing the truth, either the company has to get rid of that in- 
dividual or else run other departments on the same plan. 
Strange to say, the company found that truth-telling pays. 

" How about the boy now? " I asked my friend. 

" He has been there ten years," replied Mr. Thurman, 
" and the other day I went down to their warehouse and in- 
quired for him. The vice-president told me he couldn't 
get along without him, and when I asked the president, Mr. 
Regan answered quietly : ' He is going to be president of 
the company some day.' " 

THE WORST FELLOW I KNOW 

If you should ask me to describe the worst boy I know, I 
might surprise you. I should find him, not in the juvenile 
courtroom, but in some nice home. I should discover him 
not in a dirty suit and without a collar, but well dressed and 
wearing a bright necktie. And what I should accuse him of 
would be, not theft or malicious damage to property, but 
something for which boys do not get arrested. What he 
would have done would perhaps be " leaving things around " 
or neglecting his daily chores — only that ; what it would 
mean, though, would be that he was irresponsible, and irre- 
sponsible persons are the most dangerous sort that are not 
shut in jails. 

Did you ever think that there are no irresponsible posi- 
tions in this world? Center-field in baseball does not have 
much to do, but if he is asleep a home run may pass between 
his legs and lose his side the game. If you lie in a ham- 
mock, you hope the man who made it did it with his eyes 
open, or else you may get a crippling fall. When you sit 
in a chair, you hope the chair-maker did not forget to glue 



THINGS THAT SPOIL WELL 557 

it together. If the girl who soldered this can of salmon 
that you have for lunch left a tiny hole open it may cost 
you your life. One link in the chain of the anchor of yon- 
der ship, hammered out by an apprentice, may, if it is weak, 
let five hundred passengers upon the rocks. 

We depend daily for our safety upon persons of the most 
ordinary ability. The gateman who warns you that the 
train is coming, the track-walker who patrols the rails and 
guards the highways of the limited expresses may not be 
able to read and write. The milkman and the butcher who 
furnish you food, upon whose wholesomeness you depend, 
may never have gone to school. Very likely your motor- 
man could not pass any of the school examinations which 
you have just finished so easily. They are trustworthy, and 
you expect them to be. Yet maybe if you did the work of 
any of them the way you do your own at home, you would 
be in prison for manslaughter or lynched for carelessness 
with human life. 

" But they are paid to be faithful." Poorly enough, 
though. Some of them receive as wages no more than 
many a boy has as a weekly allowance. In comparison with 
the keen responsibility which they carry most of them have 
a ridiculous pittance. Almost every high-school boy has, in 
freedom of time, in opportunity for play, and in daily com- 
forts, more of what we call " pay " for doing his little share 
of work decently than these workaday heroes earn for 
guarding human lives and safety. 

" But I shall do my work well when I become a man." 
Probably you will. Many boys who keep their friends pick- 
ing up after them and who would never have a clean shirt 
to their backs if their mothers did not follow them around 
will grow responsible with age. But in the meantime they 



558 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

are an unnecessary nuisance to some one else. How would 
you like, after you have succeeded in life, to have this frank 
but true epitaph carved over you ? 

Here Lies 

JONATHAN JOHNSON 

A Senator of the United States and Secretary of the Interior. 
In His Youth He Wore Out One Mother, Two Aunts, 

and Fifteen Housemaids, by Neglecting 
His Home Duties, and under Their Training Learned 
To Bear Heavy Responsibilities Faithfully. 
"He Rests in Peace." 



LXXIV 
MINDING ONE'S OWN BUSINESS 

GIVING advice is ticklish. " One goes astray, no 
doubt," says A. C. Benson, " like a lost sheep ; but it 
is not the duty of another sheep to butt one back into the 
right way, unless indeed one appeals for help." 

When we start out to make things better we are most of 
us like Aria. Did you ever read Frank R. Stockton's whim- 
sical story of the clocks of Rondaine? Rondaine was an 
old town that was famous for the number of its clocks. 
They were large and small and most of them were striking- 
clocks, and all of them struck the hour at different times. 
Aria was a girl who had a clock of her own which she kept 
in her room, that not only struck the hours, the halves and 
the quarters, but also had a pretty device which told the 
time. It was a sprig of rosebush that opened at the quarter, 
was half -blown at the half and became full-blown just be- 
fore the striking of the hour. It was a continual satisfac- 
tion to Aria to think that her little clock always told her 
exactly what time it was, no matter what the other clocks 
of Rondaine might say. 

One morning, the morning before Christmas, it occurred 
to Aria that, since all the other clocks in Rondaine were 
wrong, nobody but she could know when Christmas really 
began. So she decided to go around and get the citizens 
of Rondaine to set their clocks right. 

She was amazed at the reception that she got. The bell- 

559 



560 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

ringer of her mother's church inquired sarcastically why she 
didn't ask to have the whole clock-tower set over somewhere 
else. The sacristan at the next church told her that he 
wished she was a boy, in which case he would take her by 
the collar and soundly cuff her ears. The custodian of the 
market-hall told her that since his clock had struck as it 
chose for a hundred and fifty-seven years, he did not feel 
like changing it at the request of a girl who was only four- 
teen. The cobbler confessed that he always moved his 
clock-hands forward or back as he pleased so as to get his 
work out on time and that he thought it would be necessary 
to make himself go right before he adjusted his clock. Her 
uncle told her that if he should change his clock he would 
either be stealing time from the past or the future, and he 
didn't think it would be right to do either. Finally, the su- 
perintendent of the town clock proved to Aria by a sun-dial 
that her own clock was ten minutes too slow ! 

" As she walked home, she lifted the lid of her basket and 
looked at her little rose-clock. ' To think of it ! ' she said. 
' That you should be sometimes too fast and sometimes too 
slow ! And, worse than that, to think that some of the other 
clocks have been right, and you have been wrong! But I 
do not feel like altering you to-day. If you go fast some- 
times and slow sometimes, you must be right sometimes.' ' 

"WHY DOESN'T SOMEBODY FIX THAT?" 

One of the lesser-known stories about George Washington 
is this. The general rode one day up the great Chester Val- 
ley with his staff to pay a call. When they came out of 
the house to ride away one of them vaulted over the stone- 
wall and displaced a big stone. " You'd better fix that," 
said Washington. " Oh, never mind," returned the officer, 



MINDING ONE'S OWN BUSINESS 561 

" let Bill do it," meaning his orderly, and off he rode. 
Washington said nothing, but he dismounted and replaced 
the stone. 

There are more people who are like that officer in this re- 
spect than like General Washington. If he had not put the 
stone back probably the next person who came along would 
have murmured, " I wonder why somebody doesn't fix that," 
and gone his way. You have heard the story about the king 
who placed a rock in the middle of the highway to see what 
people would do about it, and came back some months later 
and found it still there. He then rolled the stone back him- 
self and showed the people a purse of gold, which he had 
placed there as a reward for the man who should have shown 
some sense of personal responsibility. 

It might be said that real government begins in a com- 
munity as soon as its citizens stop complaining about " some- 
body " and begin to realize that " somebody " is themselves. 
This was seen out in California in the days of '49, when, 
after much lawlessness, a committee of men organized them- 
selves into Vigilantes to bring in some sort of law order. 
There is a monthly magazine published in America whose 
business is chiefly to criticize, which runs a regular depart- 
ment headed " Your Government." What an unpatriotic 
way the editor takes to put himself outside the limits of re- 
sponsibility. Edward Everett Hale used to give a stirring 
address on the subject, " We, the People." It was quoted 
of course from the first words in the American Constitution, 
and he used to be proud and earnest in showing that our gov- 
ernment differs from that of any other country in the fact 
that the very basis of its charter is that each one of us is 
the government. He used to declare that the only reason 
why there could be such an institution as Tammany, or such 



562 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

an individual as a boss, was because we were all saying, 
"Why doesn't somebody else do something?" The bril- 
liant Englishman, Chesterton, has in effect divided English 
people into two classes, those whom he calls " God-sakers " 
and those who really count. The God-sakers go around 
wringing their hands and crying, " For God's sake, why isn't 
something done?" and the others do it. 

You may or may not like Theodore Roosevelt, but the 
New York Evening Post, which is not his admirer, said a 
just thing about him the other day. The editor remarked 
that men have defined the world in many ways. Some say 
the world is ideas, and some say the world is ideals, but 
Theodore Roosevelt says, " The world is sides, 3 ' and seeing 
this, he is always trying to find the right side and then to 
fight for it. 

From Washington to Roosevelt the men who count are 
not those who leap over or walk around misplaced stones. 
They are those who bend down and put them where they be- 
long. 

Margaret Slattery had a very sensible word on this very 
matter not long ago. She says she has made up her mind 
that the " Somebody " who leaves things around and who 
ought to pick them up is herself. 

" As I thought of it I came to the conclusion that some- 
times / am Somebody. And you are, every one of you 
reading this page. And all of us together are responsible 
for a good deal of the wrong that he does in the world. 

" The fact is that in all probability you were that ' Some- 
body ' who carelessly repeated what you had heard about an- 
other girl without making any investigation as to the truth. 
It is possible that you dropped your paper on the street when 
you had finished reading, and did not Want to be troubled 



MINDING ONE'S OWN BUSINESS 563 

with it. It is even possible that you were the ' Somebody ' 
whose carelessness left the gas turned partly on and made 
the whole family ill. You probably forgot to bring up coal, 
and the logs for the fireplace ; * Somebody ' neglected it ; you 
probably left the books and magazines strewn about for your 
mother to put away in the morning ; * Somebody ' did. 

" It is possible that you were the ' Somebody ' who ought 
to have given a word of sympathy to Joseph who came back 
to the store yesterday after his father's death. Somebody 
should have thought to send flowers to express the sympathy 
you all felt, but it wasn't done. It is even possible that you 
are the one who should have said a word of appreciation to 
your mother after the delicious dinner you enjoyed last Sun- 
day. Somebody should have. 

" It was rather discouraging at first when I thought about 
it, until I began keeping my eyes open to see if ' Somebody ' 
ever did anything fine and worth while, and I found that he 
did. But so often when he did things of this kind he had a 
name and people knew it. It seemed to be only when there 
was something of which to be a little ashamed, something 
not square, not perfectly sincere, something careless or mean, 
that people were willing to hide under the name ' Somebody/ 

" Some of the finest men and women in the world have 
been those who have undertaken the tasks left for ' Some- 
body ' to do. Florence Nightingale was one. The soldiers 
had waited long years for ' Somebody ' to think of their 
need. Jane Addams is another. The poor foreigners in 
the wretched crowded districts of our great cities surely 
needed ' Somebody ' to think of them. Africa waited cen- 
turies for David Livingstone and her need was great. Lab- 
rador, bleak, desolate, almost forgotten, waited a long time 
before Grenfell took up the hard task that waited for ' Some- 



564 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

body.' There is hardly a country in the world in these 
days where some fine man or woman has not gone to take 
up work left for centuries for ' Somebody.' It is a great 
time to be alive and there are so many hundreds of oppor- 
tunities waiting for ' Somebody.' Now while you are still 
under twenty is the time to train yourself to see things that 
need to be done and to do them. In the little town where 
you live or in the great city, on the prairies or the seashore, 
— wherever this finds you, there is need and opportunity for 
* Somebody.' Is that ' Somebody ' you? I love to believe 
that it is." 



LXXV 

YOUR YOUNG BROTHER AND YOUR GROWN- 
UP SON 

*¥*HE fact that it is worth while to think occasionally about 
■■" what sort of harvest we are sowing just now is brought 
out in an amusing manner in a monologue by an old col- 
ored workingman when William Baxter, in " Seventeen," 
having been reproved by him for cracking nuts with his 
teeth, had refused to worry about what might not happen 
to him till he was forty or fifty. " Jes' listen ! " he ex- 
claimed. " Young man think he ain't nev' goin' be ole man. 
Else he think, * Dat ole man what I'm goin' to be, dat ain' 
goin' be me 'tall — dat goin' be somebody else! What I 
caih 'bout dat ole man? I ain't a-goin' take caih o' no teef 
fer him! ' Yes, suh, an' den when he git to be ole man, he 
say, ' What become o' dat young man I yoosta be ? Where 
is dat young man a-gone to ? He 'uz a fool, dat's what — 
an' / ain' no fool, so he rnus' been somebody else, not me; 
but I do jus' wish I had him hyuh 'bout two minutes — long 
enough to lam him fer not takin' caih o' my teef fer me! ' 
Yes, suh!" 

Let me make this a little more clear by telling you the 
Parable of Your Young Brother and Your Grown-up Son. 
Perhaps you have a young brother, but you didn't know, did 
you, that you have also a grown-up son. 

565 



566 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

YOUR YOUNG BROTHER 

There was once a boy, eight or ten years old, whom you 
personally knew better than did anybody else in the world. 
He had an innocent, oval face, an agile body and a frank, 
open manner. His mind was plastic to every impression. 
His heart was pure and eager. His tastes were unformed, 
and his capabilities were undeveloped. Every door of his 
nature was wide open. He could have learned to love good 
books, beautiful pictures, refined friends. He was in the 
way of entering into the wide opportunities of our time, and 
of beginning sometime to add himself to the helpful forces 
of the world. 

Among all the beautiful facts about this child, the most 
charming and hopeful was his trust. Not only did he con- 
fide in all who loved him or seemed to love him, but his trust 
in God was implicit and dependent. So much of hope and 
promise did this young life contain that it might distinctly 
have been said of him that " To him belonged the Kingdom 
of Heaven." Voices beckoned to him from every side. 
Opportunities opened to his increasing powers daily. Large 
investments were made for him by the state, the city, and by 
his patient parents and teachers. 

What have you done to this little brother of yours? 
What have you made of this boy whom you were yester- 
day? 

What have you done to his body? Did you let it grow 
supple and strong, and equipped for the heavy burdens of 
maturity? Can it do a man's work to-day, or did you fill 
his blood with tobacco, or poison it with liquor, or degrade it 
by lust, so that he loiters or slips or is dull in the world of 
wideawake men ? 

What have you done to his mind? You know what the 



YOUR YOUNG BROTHER 567 

mind of a man of eighteen or twenty-one needs to be in this 
present day. Is he accurate? Is he trained? Is he per- 
sistent? Can he do one thing well? In this stage of spe- 
cialization is there a real place for him in business? Can he 
do things to a finish? / 

What about his outlook ? Can he see into his own future ? 
Does he know how to measure up to present opportunities? 
Are the windows of his life still open, especially the windows 
that open upward? What has become of his faith? In 
short, is he ready now that he is of age to be a man among 
men in the twentieth century ? 

What made him what he is? You did. He was help- 
less. He owes comparatively little to his heredity or his 
environment. Strong men everywhere and in all times have 
outgrown these, or grown to maturity in spite of them. 
What have you made of this innocent, hopeful and help- 
less child, whose entire future in life depended almost en- 
tirely upon you? 

"Across the fields of yesterday 
He sometimes comes to me, 
A little lad just back from play — 
The lad I used to be. 

"And yet he smiles so wistfully 
Once he has crept within, 
I wonder if he hopes to see 
The man I might have been." 

YOUR GROWN-UP SON 

I see another person whom you know. He is a man of 
forty. Yet he is your son, for all he gets he also must get 
from you. He is the man whom you will be twenty years 
from now. 



568 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

At the age of forty, important changes take place in a 
man's body. It is the period of physical breakdown or of 
confirmed endurance. The kind of body which a man of 
forty has is the direct result of the physical make-up and 
habits of the man when he was twenty. This is the season 
of the wild oats' harvest. What kind of body will this man 
have if you continue for twenty years to be the kind of 
man you are to-day? How do you like his looks? How 
would you like to see a photograph of the man whom you 
are starting to become ? 

What will be the mind of this man? Will he at forty be 
a worn-out " sport " ? Will his first and last inquiry of the 
daily paper be, " What is the score ? " 

What vocation will he be pursuing? Can he, at forty, 
continue to hold his position? Will he be wanted? Will 
he be able, at forty, to maintain his place in competition with 
the man of twenty-five, who is straining every nerve to dis- 
place him ? 

How much will be his savings? What prospects will he 
have for old age ? 

What kind of a wife will he have chosen? 

What sort of a home will he be living in? 

What legacies will he have to leave to his children ? 

Will this man go to church? Will he have a religious 
faith of his own, or will his religion be in his wife's name? 
What ideals will he cherish? Will he have any ideals? 
Will be, by forty, have become of any human service? In 
the greater problems which the world must solve a genera- 
tion from now, will he have any part ? 

Are you going to endow this man, who will get almost 
nothing out of life except what you give him, with a chance 



YOUR YOUNG BROTHER 569 

or with a curse ? Is what you have made of the boy of ten 
going to be the friend or the foe of the man of forty? 

These pungent questions are only a shorter way of stat- 
ing the tremendous importance of tendency. What you are 
now you are likely to be forever. Habits tend to become 
fixed. Purposes tend to become established. The later 
years contain fewer inducements for fine living than do the 
earlier years. There is, it is true, always the possibility of 
a " second wind," but only to the athlete. 

When you throw off childhood's restraints, the financial 
support of your parents, the safeguards of the home, and 
have laid upon you the heavy and lonely burden of maturity, 
are you more likely to become the kind of a man the world 
needs, than you are now ? 

Life moves on so imperceptibly that a man can judge his 
movement, not by the boat in which he rides but by the land- 
marks on the shore which he has passed. If you will take 
time seriously to discover the opportunities which you lost 
between ten and twenty, you will get a forecast of what is 
likely to be your course for the next twenty years. 

" If only myself could talk to myself 

As I knew him a year ago, 
I could tell him a lot 
That would save him a lot 

Of things that he ought to know." 

These things are said to excite alarm, but only that alarm 
to which any brave man is willing to be aroused who real- 
izes the seriousness of having but one life to live. If you 
do not like the looks of the man you have made out of the 
innocent boy, or of the man you are likely to make out of 



570 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

the undetermined youth, you had better be scared. Still 
there is time to repair the mistakes of boyhood and take up 
manfully the problems that lie beyond it. God, and man 
too, are on the side of one who takes up earnestly the prob- 
lem of living. It is never too late for God to help a man 
make over his life. The true friends of a man are those 
who show up when he is making a new start. 

The whole problem is one of personal choice. There is a 
proverb in the Old Testament, which the Septuagint beauti- 
fully translates, " In order that thy fountains may not fail 
thee, guard them in thy heart." The entire emphasis of the 
Bible upon the heart, which is the will or the self, is justi- 
fied by life's experience. Your luck will be nothing but a 
succession of right choices. The obstacles which you delib- 
erately conquer will be the stepping-stones to the manhood 
which you desire to achieve. 

A NEW START 

I have said that it is not too late. Certainly it is not too 
early. No man who is conscious of an imperfect boyhood 
and who traces the development of tendencies in his nature 
of which he is aware, can fail to realize that he must start 
at once if he would make the man of forty a companion with 
whom he will be glad and proud to live the rest of his life. 



LXXVI 
THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL 

JJL S I read over this book, I feel as the school principal 
* ^ did when he read a set of glowing but vague testi- 
monials of a candidate for a position: " There is a strong 
smell here of something left out." That thing which I do 
not want to leave out let me state plainly in this last chap- 
ter. 

Nearly every book of counsel that I have seen seems to 
say : Hustle ; Be energetic ; Be efficient ; Be temperate ; Save 
money; and some day you will be rich, noble and successful. 
But nobody stops to explain what is going to inspire the 
hustle, renew the energy, and effect the efficiency, temper- 
ance and thrift. If I fill this book with advices about busi- 
ness and vocation, with counsel as to perfection in work and 
friendship, with proverbs of piety, and then suggest no mo- 
tive power for goodness, I leave my ship launched with- 
out sails or engine. It will not move, much less reach its 
haven. 

An old story may illustrate what I mean. It has been re- 
told from a monkish legend by the young English dramatist, 
John Galsworthy. He calls it 

THE MAN WHO SAW HIS OWN SPIRIT 

There was once a man who lived in Persia, that land where 
earthly paradises are usually placed. Like most of the in- 
habitants of that country, at least those who get into stories, 

57i 



572 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

he was always in search of earthly happiness, and had ran- 
sacked the Persian paradises to find it. 

One day, coming into one of the most beautiful homes in 
his native land, he chanced to look behind him as he en- 
tered the court-yard, for he thought he heard a sigh. What 
he saw was his own spirit, apparently breathing its last. 
As he looked down upon it with curiosity and sympathy he 
saw that it was a little thing, dry and pearly white as an 
immortelle blossom. It was slowly opening and shutting 
its mouth, just like an oyster trying to breathe. 

"What is it?" the man said. "What is the matter? 
You don't seem well." 

For some moments the spirit was breathless, but at 
length, in a wee and uncomplaining voice, it said: 

" All right, all right. Don't distress yourself, it's noth- 
ing. I've just been crowded out. That's all. Good-by." 

And so his poor little spirit, that he had never had time to 
get acquainted with, lay flat, stretched out on a long blue 
tile that was in the courtyard, and was still. 

The man stood silent for a while, gazing upon this thing 
that he had lost. Then he went to pick it up, but it came off 
on his thumb — just a smudge of gray-white powder. 

But of course the scene is Persia. And the time — long 
ago. 

BACKGROUNDS FOR SUCCESS 

Where shall we get motive power for our every-day 
task? 

Some of us find it in a fine ancestry. Sometimes the ex- 
cessive praise of Revolutionary heroes by their descendants 
who never did anything becomes ridiculous, but there is 
nothing ridiculous when a saber hung on the chimney throat 
or a yellow commission on the wall or the recollection of the 



THE MOST IMPORTANT 573 

brave days of old makes a man live a nobler life in this pres- 
ent. 

The background of one's school or college gives a similar 
inspiration. 

" The men that tanned the hide of us, 

Our daily foes and friends, 
They shall not lose their pride of us, 

Howe'er the journey ends. 
Their voice, to us who sing of it, 

No more its message bears, 
But the round world shall ring of it, 

And all we are be theirs. 
For though the dust that's part of us 

To dust again be gone, 
Yet here shall beat the heart of us — 

The School we handed on ! " 

It helps a man mightily to think what his mates expect of 
him. Wrote my fraternity chum, Pattee, once, remember- 
ing our college days : " He thinks of the splendid circle of 
fellows that touched his life in those days that are like no 
other days in the world; he thinks of the rushes and scraps 
when they stood shoulder to shoulder and fought for the old 
class, he thinks of the football team as it battled in the mud, 
playing clean ball with every ounce of its strength, for the 
fellows on the sidelines were singing the ' Alma Mater ' and 
the ball was going right down the field; he finds himself 
humming the college hmyn : 

" May no act of ours bring shame 
To one heart that loves thy name, 
May our lives but swell thy fame, 
Dear old Pennsylvania." 

A lump is in his throat and he has to swallow. He's hum- 
ming now the old campus song in which the fellows blended 



574 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

so beautifully on those June evenings when the twilight stole 
through the trees : 

" Other days are very near us ; 

As we stand here in the glow, 
We can almost hear the voices 

Of the men of long ago, 
Who beneath these same old maples 

In the evening's fading light 
Sang the songs of Alma Mater 

As we sing them here to-night." 

And next June is the reunion, and the fellows will all be back 
again — and he springs to his feet and cries out, 'My 
God, I'll be a man for the sake of the fellows and the old 
college.' " 

History gives us such a background. It takes us to a 
height above our own little daily tasks, helps us to see the 
sweep and splendour of humanity's struggle and to realize 
that one's own life is a real chapter of that struggle. 

" The splendour falls 
On castle walls 
And snowy summits old in story." 

Olden castles beckon the lad to build castles of his own. not 
in Spain, and storied summits call him to write new stories 
on the mountains that rise above the gardens where he toils 
to-day. 

I work hard. 

But when my work is over I have a retreat of my own. 

There I sit with the deathless dead and speak with them face to 

face. 
They wrought works that I can never do, 
They subdued kingdoms in which I am but a child. 



THE MOST IMPORTANT 575 

• 

But they never dreamed any dream that I have not dreamed also. 
I have fought as bravely as Leonidas. 
I have kept the faith like Ignatius. 

I have sorrowed with Dante and seen the beatific vision. 
I have loved as Juliet loved, and I live. 
I cannot be robbed of my high companionship, 
The terror of fate cannot take the Past away from me, 
And what these have loved to do, I can forever love to be. 

But the force that counts most often and most powerfully 
in most young lives is that of a person. " Send one, Lord," 
is the prayer that many a boy or girl has offered and had 
answered, " one to love the best that is in me, and to accept 
nothing less from me; to touch me with the searching ten- 
derness of the passion for the ideal; to demand everything 
of me for my own sake ; to give me so much that I can- 
not think of myself, and to ask so much that I can keep 
nothing back; to help me so to live that, while I part 
with many things by the way, I lose nothing of the gift of 
life." 

Whatever the name we give to the force that makes motive 
power for our daily living ; ancestry, fellowship, history, or 
the love of one who will accept nothing ignoble from us, 
these are all, I am sure, expressions of that one inner life, 
which is God. To young people His voice speaks in the 
past, in nature, in human love. To listen is the highest 
function of a man, to obey this heavenly vision is the life- 
work of a faithful knight. 

This listening and obedience belong to the life of the body. 
How superb the response of the young chevalier who knows 
that no misuse or mischief done his body is going to hinder 
him in rising, alert and quick, to do a man's work in the 
world. This is what is asked for in the first verse of an 
anonymous poem, called " The Cow-boy's Prayer " : 



576 THE YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF IDEALS 

" Just let me live my life as I've begun ! 

And give me work that's open to the sky; 
Make me a partner of the wind and sun, 
And I won't ask a life that's soft or high." 

We can listen and obey with the mind. It takes brains to 
be good. It needs brains to live. To be the man one would 
like to be one can't afford to do cheap thinking or let 
others do one's thinking for him. The second stanza is : 

" Make me as big and open as the plains ; 
As honest as the horse between my knees; 
Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains; 
Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze/' 

And we listen and obey with the spirit. The torch we 
carry is lit from the infinite Light ; the splendour that falls is 
from a Day that has no night. And so we ask : 

"Just keep an eye on all that's done and said; 
Just right me sometimes when I turn aside; 
And guide me on the long, dim trail ahead — 

That stretches upward towards the Great Divide." 






INDEX 



Accounts, How to Keep, 363 

Acres of diamonds, 239 

Addams, Jane, 154, 493, 563 

Adventure, 93 

Agassiz, Louis, 172, 421 

Alcohol, 66, 76 

Alcott, Louisa M., 154 

Ambition, 155, 456 

Amundsen, Ronald, 519 

Amusement schedules, 462 

Anger, 143 

A'nt Haskett, 178 

"Appleseed, John," 173 

Appreciation, 125, 164, 335 

Art, 223 

Athletic honor, 67 

Athletics, 15, 46, 60, 72, 83 

Backwardness, 232 

Barton, Clara, 129, 231 

Bartram, John, 168 

Baseball, 69 

Baxter's tea party, 292 

Beauty, 111, 120 

Bee-man of Orn, The, 183 

Begin even if you can't see the 

end, 262 
Benson, O. H., boys' club leader, 

270, 283, 284, 493 
Big brothers, 188, 428 
Big in little things, 427 
Biography, 221 
Books, 228, 409 

Enjoyment of, 204 

Lists of, 209, 211 

of knowledge, 223 
Boy Scouts, 31, 135, 482 



Boys' interests, 154 
Boys making good, 274, 282, 489 
Brashear, John, 244, 476 
Breastworks, 247 
Bridge-building, 438 
Brooke, Rupert, 491, 506 
Burbank, Luther, 235 
Burroughs, John, 170 
Business books, 209 

Calf-love, 471 

Calisthenics, 16, 31 

Camp-fire Girls, 92, 120, 290 

Camping, 101 

Canning, 288 

Carelessness, 556 

Cave-man, The, 381 

Changing vocation, 375 

Character, 489 

Chautauqua, 227 

Cheerfulness, 124, 411, 521, 539 

Cheering defeat, 425 

Christ of the Andes, The, 500 

Cigarettes, 17, 54, 74, 112 

Cleanness, in 

Clothing, 106, 112 

Cluttered lives, 310 

College, . 146, 295, 573 

College: does it pay? 335 

College expenses, 280 

College graduates' incomes, 346 

College vices, 341 

Comparing the vocations, 374 

Contentment, 530 

Conversation, 193 

Conwell's Acres of Diamonds, 239 

Cooking, 289 



577 



578 



INDEX 



Counsel, Books of, 222 
Courage, 137 
Courtesy, 421, 443, 467 
Curiosity and the choice of a vo- 
cation, 369 

Darwin, Charles, 232 
Definiteness needed, 309 
Diet, 54, 109 
Discouragement, 370 
Drudgery, Conquest of, 243 
Durable satisfactions, 350 
Duty, 370 
Dying cheerfully, 542 

Early rising, 36 

Eccles and its land, 34 

Economy, 45, 352 

Edison, Thomas A., 166, 255, 267 

Education at home, 226 

what it is, 229 
Emergencies, 302 
Encouragement, 189, 260 
English athletics, 47 
Enthusiasms, see Interests 
Europe, 159 
Exercises, 33, 41, 53, 65, 396 

Fair play, 83 
Family, The, 382 
Fathers, 449 
Fatigue, 39 

Feast of Life, The, 312 
Fiction, 212 
Fidelity, 255 
Finish, 551 
Fitzhugh, R. H., 515 
Flag-makers, The, 256 
Football, 19, 62 
Ford, Henry, 261, 267 
Fortune-telling, 186 
Freshman, Being a, 45^ 
Friendship, 396, 575 
Fun, 464 

Gambling, 67, 88 



Gang, The, 395 

Gardening, 284 

German calisthenics, 31 

Girls, Athletics for, 64 
Beauty of, ill, 120, 469 
Exercises for, 41, 65, 396 
Growth of, 23, 39, 505 

Girls' interests, 154, 467 

Girls making good, 277, 284 

Giving right names, 403 

Go back and do it, 418 

Good turns, 482 

Government boys' clubs, see Ben- 
son, O. H. 

Grant, U. S., 115, 139, 267, 425 

Greeks, The 30, 40, 41, 401 

Greely, A. W., 546 

Grenfell, Wilfred, 268, 563 

Handicaps, 238 
Happiness, 523, 54° 
Hawkes' blindness, 229 
Health, 27, 37, 120, 130 
Heather honey, 226 
Herbert, George, 477 
(Heredity not a limitation, 231 
Heroes, Boys', 153, 404, 410 
High School, Vocation-study in, 

330 
High School: What a day is 

within, 348 
Home study, 199 
Hood, Thomas, 534 
Hospitality, 436 

How to discourage the devil, 370 
Hurry, 533, 536 

Imitation, 405 
Incentive, 148 
Industry, 278 
Initiations, 400 

Interests of youth, 153, 159, 166, 
178, 264, 344 

Jitney, Be a, 250 
Junior partners, 417 



INDEX 



579 



Kallikaks, 58 
Keller, Helen, 154, 245 
Knighthood, 401 
Knights of to-day, 403 
Knock a boost, Every, 433 

Lamb, Charles, 527, 533 

Lane, Franklin K., 256 

Laughinghouse, Charles, 492 

Laughter, 526 

Learning how to look, 163 

Leaving school, 38 

Lee, Robert E., 139, 190, 425, 516 

Life a mosaic, 313 

Lincoln, Abraham, 189, 234 

Little things, 523 

Lloyd George, David, 231, 232 

Loyalty, 85 

Luck, 239 

Mac at the back, 413 

Magnanimity, 425 

Manana, Frank, 184 

Marriage, 300, 475 

Memory, 199 

Minding one's own business, 559 

Money, Earning, 274, 306, 343 

Money in life, 177 

Money-saving, 352 

Money-value of training, 337, 346 

Mother-daughter clubs, 288 

Mothers, 453 

Muir, John, 169 

Napoleon, 232 
Naturalists, 94, 98 
Never lie down, 34 
" No Show " : poem, 241 

Opportunity, 240, 253, 260 
Outdoor life, 29, 91. 121; 472 
Out-of-school education, 226 
Overstrain, 72 

Parkman's blindness, 238 
Patriotism, 491 



Peace of Chartres, 538 

Pepys, Samuel, 533 

Personality, 508 

Physical development, 22, 33, 40 

Plateaus of practice, 307 

Play, 48, 61, 133, 525 

Pluck, 269, 278, 539 

Plutarch, 530 

Poetry, 221 

Politics, 496 

Practice, 305 

Preparation, Study of, 293 

Preparedness lifelong, 303, 495 

V 

Quiet heart, The, 536 

Raleigh, Walter, 545 

Reading, 153, 204, 211 

Rest, 37, 132 

Right names, 403 

Rondaine, Clocks of, 559 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 39, 50, 83, 

88, 254, 523, 562 
Rooters, 46 

Sand, 265 

Saunterers, 168 

Saving, 361 

School, 455 

School spirit, 146, 397 

Science, 156 

Scott, Captain Robert, 426, 519 

Self-Analysis Chart, 316 

Self-education, 227 

Self-mastery, 143, 146 

Self-pity, 547 

Self-study, 316, 423 

"Seventeen," 292', 505, 565 

Shaw, Bernard, 433 

Shrine, What makes a, 31 

Slackers, 27 

Slang, 122, 157 

Smartness discredited, 38 

Smile, 124 

Smoking, 17, 54, 74, III, 143 

Somebody, 562 



5 8o 



INDEX 



Spartans, 30 
Speech, 122, 193 
Spoiling well, 549 
Sportsmanlikeness, 46, 80 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 134, 137, 

140, 263, 422, 518 
Stopping to decide, 373 
Stories, 212 

Stover at Yale, 170, 270, 459, 467 
Strength and splendour, 511 
Success, 350, 572 
Susie Damn, 442 
Sweetbriar lives, 447 
Sylvia, 479 



Table talk, 197 

Talk, 193 

Tea-pot in the Soul, A, 436 

Teachers, 514 

Tests for vocation, 328 

Think, 200, 228 

Thoreau, Henry D., 93, 168, 540 

Thrift, 352 

Tide-marks, 181 

Time-tables, 309 

Tolerance, 430 



Torch-bearers, 381 
Training, 49, 53, 56, 72, 346 
Travel, 161, 186, 336 
Trees, 95 

Trudeau, E. L., 428, 518 
Truth-telling, 422, 554 

Unfinished, The, never bores, 267 

Vitality, 38 

Vocation Bureau, 320 

Vocation, Choice of a, 296, 324, 

367, 372 
Voelker's enthusiasm, 412 
Voice, 123 

Washington, George, 498, 560 
Wedgewood, Josiah, 475 
Whimpering, 545 
Wilson, Woodrow, 408 
Woman's future, 301 
Work, 36, 259, 270, 297 
Work in summer, 272 
World brotherhood, 497 
Worry, 521 

Your young brother, 566 



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